Essays
My Eager Lover
My eager lover is coming to me. I am waiting by my window to catch a first glimpse of her. She will be smiling, her blue eyes will be shining. I will feel, for I know myself, I will feel breathless. I am already excited. Hard cold rain is falling Threading her lithe...
Sedgwick Cemetery 1947 – Aunt Katie
Her withered old face died into a long shiny coffin We stood and watched in amazement as they took her from the North Dakota coal black hearse. We listened in obedient silence as mourners sang "The Old Rugged Cross" In that clearing surrounded by...
In Search of the Sacred Valley
I remember when my father placed the candle onto Incan stone. No larger than a magnolia bud. Alabaster colored. The texture of an eyelid. A wick broken in a jacket pocket. It lit on the third match. We sheltered the candle in a mossy terrace corner and watched the...
Seventeen ways to avoid saying ya/no I love you!
Love, big topic. When I travel, part of my greatest enjoyment is in watching and talking to people. The worlds a fun and exciting place when you speak the language and even more mysterious when you don't. I speak neither French, except menu French, and no Japanese,...
In My Unswept Garden Lie the Scattered Cherry Blossoms
200 miles per hour, Tokyo to Nagoya on the Shinkansen, Japan's much vaunted bullet train and I am reading Cheri by Colette, a book that I l purchased in Paris at Shakespeare and company in Saint Germain-des-Pres on the banks of the Seine. Sensuous and acute,...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778 and Fukahara Gogaku 1730-1799
What I love most about travel is the challenge of the new. This past month I have been in France, all in Paris and Japan. In France I walked the streets endlessly, lost five pounds, ate ferociously, drank semi-modestly, made enormous discoveries. What I...
TOTO THE SINGING TOILET
TOTO THE SINGING TOILET: IN JAPAN THE TOILETS ARE MARVELS OF WONDER AND WORKS OF ART. AS I APPROACH THE TOILET WITH SOME TREPIDATION, THERE ARE ELECTRIC WIRES HANGING FROM THE THING, THE SEAT OPENS UP AND THE WHOLE THING STARTS TO HUM. AS I STAND THERE IN WONDERMENT...
Pan au chocolate and a white frog
I am dreaming, my time clock is out of whack! I awake in the middle of the night from dreams of myopic turmoil. I roll over on my side pull my knees up and lie there a while then finally I roll over throw the covers off, reach for the light cord in the dark, find it...
Paris to Tokyo on the Arc
I am flying business out of Seattle to Frankfurt, then on to Paris. Business is worth it. Leaving Seattle in a gray, driving, leaden rain that was propelled by Northerlies. I jumped from my car at SeaTac, Kissed fervently my beautiful wife, Jane. I walked to the...
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