What can I say about any time I spent in Montauk, Land's End, on the beach, on the sands, in the surf, viewing the sky, entering the waves, watching the waves, closing my eyes and listening to the waves, hearing the muted rhythmic pounding of them against the shore as if envelopped in cotton when … Continue reading Montauk Beach, C’est Moi
Year: 2014
Individual Divided
Individuality, it seems, has not been respected for too long. It is more than just a few decades, no? The increase in disrespect for individuality, even coming from those who think they are expressing their individuality most pronouncedly, is part of the problem our freedom faces. An erosion of liberty is a problem for any society … Continue reading Individual Divided
Re-reading Liberty [Flash Fiction]
Who is like unto God, the Arch-angel Michael asks as he cuts Satan in half, or so I was told the story of what his name is supposed to mean. I do not even care if it is true or not in the sense that it is part of the lore or not, and not … Continue reading Re-reading Liberty [Flash Fiction]
You Could not Take Your Eyes off of It
Horror and the Baroque [a short story] I couldn't take my eyes off it at the Met, he said his friend had said. He did, he said this, my friend said this, he said. How long ago now I should be able to say, he said his friend had said, but did not say where … Continue reading You Could not Take Your Eyes off of It
Memorandum [Flash Fiction]
Words echo, resounding in other words. A shadow is a spectral echo, an echo an acoustic shadow, a shadow, a hole in light, light a shield against the dark. My soul is like Swiss cheese.
Across the Wilderness [Flash Fiction]
What else is there to say about the wilderness, the desert, the emptiness we face every day in a culture void of Truth, committed to re-enforcing the ideas that there is no Truth, that there are no little truths, that there is no transcendence, nor absolution, nor objectivity. We are no longer beings of spirit, … Continue reading Across the Wilderness [Flash Fiction]
History, Truth and the New American Way
What do we mean by the history of history? Is it closer to the history of historiography? The history of history writing is an important history to be told, yet the focus on historiography has often been asserted, in recent decades anyway, to imply (for no inference is clear) that history is only the writing of … Continue reading History, Truth and the New American Way
Dawn by Hither Hills, Montauk
Sun rise from the beach in Montauk. Getting up before dawn to wait for the sun. Waiting for the Sun was an album by the Doors--my favorite group when I was . . . how old was I then the first time I listened to the Doors, still played by the crew at WNEW when I … Continue reading Dawn by Hither Hills, Montauk
The Floor [A Short Story]
Je voudrais dire la vérite´ J'aime la vérité. --Jean Cocteau, "Le Menteur" The Opinions of Anonymous Prologue To kill or not to kill, that is the question, whether it is nobler in the mind to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous morons around you, or just to end them by cutting their throats, slashing … Continue reading The Floor [A Short Story]
Montauk, Summer 2014
Another Morning in Montauk
Me, a word I use in French sometimes, moi. The rays of the sun from behind the clouds one day on the beach lying and reading and sipping the beers we brought from our room, the beers that we bought yesterday in town, a summer ale, I think, or was it the Lobster Ale I'm thinking about. … Continue reading Another Morning in Montauk
Plaza de Toros, Madrid
Plaza de Toros, Madrid
Greed and the Margin of Self Absorption
Giving thanks is other than getting them. Do we give thanks or expect to get them? Do I? Have we? Which one when? To give rather than to get--this is the fundamental difference between forgiving and forgetting, the former a step in the spiritual path of redemption and transcendence. The latter is simply another step … Continue reading Greed and the Margin of Self Absorption
Mega Millions Update
It appears that the State has fixed its website. I can only hope that the previous post had something to do with it. Perhaps not. Perhaps so. I will flip a coin to find out; I will collect my five wining dollars today from yesterday's Mega Millions.
Mega Madness, New York State and Other Malevolent Designs Imagined in the Mind of One of Its Residents [Flash Fiction]
If you type Mega Millions into your address bar and click the Mega Millions link that pops up, you will be directed to a Mega Millions official page, only one that's been frozen at 11/4/14 for two weeks--two weeks. Why, you might ask, would the home page of the State of New York's official Mega … Continue reading Mega Madness, New York State and Other Malevolent Designs Imagined in the Mind of One of Its Residents [Flash Fiction]
Ambiguity and Me [Flash Fiction]
Humanity is an entrance. Humanity is a portal that opens on two sides. Each side of the portal there is a human being. Now 'to enter' in French is 'entrer.' 'Entre,' in French, is a preposition related to the verb. This French preposition translates in English, 'between.' Yes, every way we enter is an entrance, every … Continue reading Ambiguity and Me [Flash Fiction]
Merrily or Merely Going Along
Government-management and state-education-department control over ESOL across the country have delivered to ESOL teachers the kind of protocols that do not necessitate educating or learning (not exactly the same thing, but related enough for both to be achieved without contrary effects), nor do they necessitate quality or experience be present in those who are hired. … Continue reading Merrily or Merely Going Along
Mediocrity and Success
This is not an argument against quotas; I understand the use of them, not the necessity of them. I accept the function of them, but only when appropriately handled. I will address this appropriateness latter in the essay. My argument herein is not a tacit defense of eliminating quotas. It is an attempt to cite … Continue reading Mediocrity and Success
Poet, Maker, Wrighter, Builder
To be a poet or not to be a poet, I've been stealing from Hamlet for a generation in time. I am a poet. I am in the middle of designing the cover of my upcoming collection of poems . . . poet, poeta, Greek for maker. Aristotle's poetics relevant for all forms of fiction, itself … Continue reading Poet, Maker, Wrighter, Builder
Vox Populi (The Commentary of Blogger [a short-short story])
. . . and then she says: Now that street thugs have cell phones they are not going to destroy the new terminals for charging cell phones--what, they did not have quarters when the cost of a pay phone was twenty-five cents? Of course any fear of the dregs of our city destroying community property … Continue reading Vox Populi (The Commentary of Blogger [a short-short story])
Hydrogen Was the Flame in the Hindenburg
Yes. Let's mass produce the new hydrogen fueled cars. Let's have 1000s of mini Hindenburgs waiting to happen. Compressed hydrogen sounds so safe.
Teaching, the State and Merrily Going Along
Letting bureaucrats manage pedagogy is a lot like letting them and lawyers manage health care. But, diatribes herein restrained, I know a woman who is currently in a position teaching ESOL where the new mandates from the state, and the newer administration where she is employed, have the program she works for under fire from … Continue reading Teaching, the State and Merrily Going Along
Totalities are Totalitarian [Flash Fiction]
Any-man not every man, that is Any Man is who should speak here; we are too far removed from the Medieval Everyman. How is it that we do not see that this is true here, there and everywhere, thus of course the rhetorically preferable anywhere. Bureaucracy is always pedantic and always impersonal. It only functions … Continue reading Totalities are Totalitarian [Flash Fiction]
Quantity Trumps Quality; Racism and the Privilege of Quotas
Non-profit or virtually non-profit organizations do not need to seek quality workers for any of their positions. Good-enough is the marker of determination, more specifically, what racial or ethnic quota can be filled from any of the semi-qualified to quantify that they are not racist or prejudiced, except in how many people of color they … Continue reading Quantity Trumps Quality; Racism and the Privilege of Quotas
A Place in the Sun
How many more places in the sun are there for the super rich and powerful to frolic in before they conclude that everything about the global economy turning around depends on them making a lot more money?
Obama Cares; Reforms Policy on Deportation
Is Obama clutching at the reeds--we do think he is drowning, don't we? Are we to believe that the Obama Administration's rate of deportation--the highest in US history--was because there was staunch opposition to his more benevolent policy decisions that were not allowed to come to fruition???????? From the start, Obama came after immigrants with … Continue reading Obama Cares; Reforms Policy on Deportation
Maine Judge and Maine Nurse are Maniacs not Mainers
Congratulations Mr. President
Has President Obama single-handedly given the Republicans a two house majority? Could there be a less competent intelligent man for the Oval office? What did we imagine was going to happen with Obama having been bought by Goldman Sachs, priming their bailout from the Feds by having gotten behind the first African-American President of the … Continue reading Congratulations Mr. President
Shadow World
We have collectively walked back into Plato's cave preferring there the shadows to the light of day we retreated from.
Attending Not-thinking [A Short Story]
To essay or not to essay, that might be a question in a flash, another thing made in non-fiction is still a fiction of a kind, no? All philosophy is another endeavor in fiction, or another fictional endeavor in thinking? To endeavor or not to endeavor; oh the intrepid thinker, the intrepid defender of democracy. … Continue reading Attending Not-thinking [A Short Story]
Pots and Kettles Tell It
Pots and kettles must fill our dreams. Typical--we're caught in the PoliticaL Party Ping-pong that is America's favorite past time, not baseball. Hop-scotch with the truth of America's power dynamics played. You do assume that there are ideological differences between Obama and Bush when they are flip-sides of the same coin. One is the oil … Continue reading Pots and Kettles Tell It
History, Oceans and the Absence of Progress
To say history is progressive is like saying the ocean is progressive. It's not.
Humans, Chimps and the Creation of Adam
A good degree of what is behaviorally characteristic of the chimpanzee would be relevant to a definition of myself as human if the homo-sapiens were the first, the last and the foremost in my definition of myself. I am 98% identical in DNA with our primate brothers, the chimps, as are all homo-sapiens. I would mark nothing distinct by being human from being homo-sapiens. The terms would be synonymous, and with the way our culture thinks rhetorically today, these synonyms would be interchangeable in all contexts. What is good for homo-sapiens is good for human. Do you think all those missionaries who were propogating the missionary position had any idea thay were also sponsoring the monkey way?
I once saw the Sistine Chapel depiction of the Creation of Adam. It was a revelation to me in the critical distinction between human nature and homo-sapiens nature. The homo-sapiens is an evolutionary contingency from the…
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Contingent Points
Bullets on target.
To choose is essential to human freedom.
Human freedom is a result of an active respect for human rights.
People must choose to respect human rights to insure that they live free.
The right to choose is an essential right a woman has whether the law supports it or not.
To uphold the law that supports women’s rights, civil and human, is the only sane choice a free people can make.
A woman’s right to choose her fate is contingent with the right to choose to have an abortion or to give birth.
Leiby Kletzky and God the Ungodly
A reissue from three years ago, July 14th 2011, nearing now the anniversary of the writing. I forget exactly when the news struck of little Leiby’s death. No parent can or could be indifferent. This I take to be self-evident and universal, yes, a transcendent truth we must know, must hold, in order for our humanity to remain in tact. Yes, humanity is a state of being, one of being human when being human is to be humane.
I did not know Leiby. I did not know his parents. I am not Jewish. If I were I would not be Orthodox. This is not a condemnation of orthodoxy. If I were Jewish I would most likely be like the friends I grew up with in East Flatbush Brooklyn, reformed. I am merely filtering this conception through the prism of my secular Catholicism. I am Catholic, most surely on Christmas and Easter as most of my Jewish friends and classmates at PS 208 were Jewish at least for New Year and Passover, or Pesach as 1 in 3 of them said. Belief was of a different order for us in East Flatbush, either Jewish or Christian, really Catholic because you were not likely a Protestant, yet of all my closest friends before I was eighteen, one was Lutheran and the other Anglican, Episcopalian.
Leiby’s parents have a different take…
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Misbirth
Misbirth: Pendulums and Curtain Rods
There have always been ways to induce miscarriage in every society for all time. Medical advances may have insured greater safety; the “industrial” world, or the techonologically advanced world we live in, may have made an abortion one of the safest medical procedures, yet more women die of medical malpractice every year than they do of breast cancer. And that’s a statistic for the United States.
It’s in our contemporary society where traditional herbs or teas have been forgotten. Every midwife in every village in every country is or was also the abortion lady. Abortion has always been an option, and homeopathically, probably a lot safer than in cities in industrial advanced societies. Do we imagine that an abortion for a black teenaged girl in backwoods rural 1930s Mississippi, the daughter of a sharecropper, was more dangerous than an abortion for a black girl in 1950s Detroit? Pre-Roe-vs,-Wade. Women in…
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JFK, The Prophet of Contemporary Government Contempt for The People
So you imagine that JFK was a great champion of freedom. You believe that he had a moral center, that he was not both a security risk to the US and a travesty as a leader of a free people. You must also think that his most famous quote about not asking your country to … Continue reading JFK, The Prophet of Contemporary Government Contempt for The People
I am We the People
The Lamentations
We who oppose contemporary politics as it has been played in the arenas of states across our globe have also helped create a cultural weakness in itself a strength only in its power to debilitate. We do not write; we do not read; we cannot. We have been engaging the ritual practices of the dual cults of the Now and the New for so long that there is no other time than now, there is no future and there is no past. Ours is the best of times or in other words, the worst of times. Ours is the season of light or darkness depending how you flip your coin. We do love to flip coins as much as we do playing hop-scotch with the truth. We no longer serve the subjectivity of little truths, let alone the once assumed objectivity of larger ‘T’ Truth. We instead preach the salvation of…
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Being Wary of Russia Would Have Made Sense All these Years; or, Tirade, Diatribe and an Otherwise Imaginary Polemic [Flash Fiction]
The truth in short from a man who spent most of his formative years the son of one of America's foremost Cold-warriors. Of course you know that it is a truth self-evident that is always better to be dead than to be red. Don't think that Russia is not still a little red. Please don't … Continue reading Being Wary of Russia Would Have Made Sense All these Years; or, Tirade, Diatribe and an Otherwise Imaginary Polemic [Flash Fiction]
Essays Essays Essays
The Essay Review is dedicated to continuing the traditions of the personal essay.
The Essay Review has been dedicated to representing the personal essay in social and political commentary; philosophy, history and language; literature and theater; music, dance and film; love, art and poetry. theessayreview.wordpress.com
Koch Bros. Exposed
Koch Bros. Exposed. via Koch Bros. Exposed. You have to watch this documentary. Koch Bros. assault on safety net, how they pay think tanks to create dread for the future, trying to convince us through echo chamber reporting, that Social Security is going bankrupt, when it has a 2.6 trillion dollar surplus. Raising the retirement … Continue reading Koch Bros. Exposed
Finland Surgically Removes Russia’s Offense
I do not know why there is such surprise at Russia’s weakness in the Olympics. Russia has not nor has it ever had a monopoly on producing the highest caliber hockey players in the world. The Soviet Red Army team were the bullies of international and olympic play. Iron Curtain refs let them get away with too many penalties and a lot of dirty play. Did you watch Kovalchuk and Radulov and Markov in these Olympics. Always behind the play, always when the refs are lookinbg the other way, elbows come up, sticks get used on ankles the back of the knees etc. Kvalchuk is 30 and left the NHL because he can’;t be a bully in NOrth America. In the NHL, Russians aren’t always the biggest players. In international play, Russian players are bullies. The Soviet Red Army team were professionals–no question. Lets call diamonds diamonds and clubs clubs. Paper Tiger. Russia is not the worst of International Hockey, but it is far far from the best, not even among the best. Sweden, Czech Republic, Finland, Canada, the US are all of them superior to Russian hockey.
Why is it a surprise? The Soviet Union dominanted at a time when they were the only professional level hockey players playing in the Olympics. All American and Canadian and Swedish and Czech and Finnish professional level hockey players were playing in professional leagues and ineligible. But because announcers are sycophantic, nobody calls the Russians on how full of shit they are. A Russian hockey player playts for the Red Army team for two decades and is called an amateur? His only job in the Soviet Union, the Spartan State it was, was to play hoockey. Wayne Gretsky was plying pro hockey at 16 in the WHA and the NHL had to bend rules to let him play under the age of 19 when the WHA merged with the NHL. Terry Sawchuk never played in the Olympics, Bobby Orr never played in the Olympics, Mike Bossy, Phil Esposito, Guy LaFleur…
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Plaza de Torres, nor Plaza de Toros, Madrid, July 2012
Soul & Anti-Soul
Soul & Anti-Soul. Soul and Anti-Soul have a parallel energetic relationship with Matter and Anti-Matter; metaphysics and physics are parallel and mutually reciprocal. via Soul & Anti-Soul. Previously published in The Revue. Editor in Chief of The Revue: Jay V Ruvolo.
Enemy of the People #1? [Flash Fiction]
An ornery man speaks in diatribe of something that pisses him off. Do you imagine that anybody should not be so pissed off as he gets in this diatribe that you are privy to here because it is as it is in the form it is in the context it has been presented by me … Continue reading Enemy of the People #1? [Flash Fiction]
The Falling Leaf Review 