a short story Length in Tolstoy equals the desire to make more money; length in Tolstoy was the hunger to be paid more. Lev was paid by the word. Anna Karenina and War and Peace are as long as they are principally for this reason (--is this really a reason or merely an explanation [not exactly the same]?). … Continue reading How Tolstoy Affected the Form of the Novel

Person in English comes from the Latin persona, and this means mask, as in what covers the face. This should give some insight to what we mean by personality and how personality shifts, changes, transforms with context and by the presence of other players--dramatis personae. Yes, I used to say and have said before in other writings … Continue reading Personality is Maskality

All is through the glass darkly . . . and so the New York Yankees a soccer team by my say so aside, the political state metaphysically opposes the religious at every turn. It has so since the Renaissance. The birth of the modern world was the death of the medieval ecclesiastical. America's hostility to … Continue reading Through the Glass Darkly

Remember what I have said and will say again---Vermeer was the first artist directly influenced by photography. His camera obscura was photography without the chemistry of film processing or other chemically treated plates. He used his camera to set perspective, to see how light played with the projection/representation of images. His use of the rudiments of photography helped him … Continue reading Vermeer and a Photographic Perspective

When I was teaching freshman composition, and issues of identity were raised or brought up as topics for papers, there were no light skinned African Americans who did not discuss how their lighter skin was a source of exclusion or aversion from some darker skinned African Americans in their community, or how questions of authenticity … Continue reading Chiaroscuro

According to the Lakota calendar, I am born in The Moon of the Falling Leaf; thus, The Falling Leaf Review published by Falling Leaf Press.

There is nothing herein that stands opposed to Gay Marriage; if there are any questions, they are targeted at how marriage has been defined culturally, and linguistically over the millennia. An examination of the etymology of the titles given to the two heterosexuals joining in current matrimony will reveal that marriage has as its chief, … Continue reading American Puritanism and Gay Marriage {a repost from five years ago}

There's an anecdote about a man on a road who sees the Buddha but does not know it is Buddha. The man sees the Buddha approach and even from a distance down the road can see that the Buddha is greatly illuminated, that he is surrounded by a special aura, something more than charisma allows. … Continue reading Be Awake [Flash Fiction]

Every President has a choice when she or he ascends to the Oval Office, and that is irrespective of how much Money and Power have supported a candidate's successful Presidential bid--and this choice is whether or not he or she will be the Bitch of Money and Oligarchic Power or a Champion of the People … Continue reading Moloch’s Whore

It seems reasonable that a universal humanity should be defended, and that that defense should be well articulated. Woman has been prime for this kind of defense for a very long time. Hers is a humanity less than deservedly respected, even now when we think we are honoring and respecting women, socially, politically, institutionally, ethically, … Continue reading Unalienable Human Rights are Universal Human Rights

The problem with many determinisms is that they are not scientific at all, and instead are misguided, or misapplied, quests for God.

Remember, always, always, remember . . . reading is not superficially skimming the page, nor is thinking ever randomly passing images in the mind or playing hop-scotch with words.

Woman is not determined by her biology. This seems simple enough to say, but has it been adequately articulated by us in her defense. This position was held by most of us in college when I was an undergraduate; this has become one of many clichés we accept in our arsenal of received ideas about … Continue reading Some Remarks on Women’s Rights

What We Now Teach our Children; a Monologue   It is interesting for me to observe in our pedagogy and in our media how one or another determinism is set against free-will, turning free-will into a fanatical idea in a cult of the individual. All this meant to destroy the idea of freedom, undermine the … Continue reading An Actor Prepares [Flash Fiction]

Perhaps swallowing dogma whole only leaves one with a socio-political gastro-intestinal distress, as if there is an analogy for gastro-intestinal processes or disruptions in what we can call the political mind; but then we do speak of the body politic, don't we? In my understanding, from what I see, what I hear, what I personally … Continue reading “Live Free or Die” Might be a Motto, But . . .

It is sad to say, but say I must, that the following is not in the cause of the growing Know-Nothing Party fear of the current Republican frenzy to out-do one another in the many forms of contemptible politics or politicking. Bill the Butcher from Scorsese's Gangs of New York I am not; Donald Trump I could … Continue reading Shooting Dice and Other New York Games of LIberty

It is not only the President's responsibility, but every citizen's obligation to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, and I do not care what my Church or Priest says or your Minister or your Rabbi or your Imam says.  There is no law above the Constitution here in … Continue reading All Enemies Foreign and Domestic

https://youtu.be/IggI_fXnMrE

When privileges are offered in place of respect for rights, freedom is forestalled.

Today (July 11th, 2015) is the 4th anniversary of Leiby's murder, July 11th, 2011.   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 … Continue reading God the Ungodly; a reprint

https://youtu.be/KP2BUYEGKjI

Here is now and there is then. Time and space are an indissoluble unity. Every destination remains there until it is here, and then the journey is a was there. It is only the journey that is perpetually here. Arriving at a destination is cumulative in the moment of arrival. There is no extension. It … Continue reading Here and There

Are all the waiters now in the Carnegie Deli Chinese? I went there recently, I think it was New Year's Day, the year I saw DeCaprio and Scorsese's fiasco, The Wolf of Wall Street--I was not offended by the movie, except by the screenplay, how adolescent the writing was, written, it seemed, by a man and … Continue reading Confused, Confounded, Conflated

And that government of the power, by the power and for the power shall not perish from this earth unless We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, establish and maintain our responsibilities to the People, bearing our weight in counterbalance to the State, which will always attempt to impose its weight … Continue reading A Question of Balance

The conditions of totalitarian rule are such that fear, a prime factor in totalitarian control, displaces good people from their goodness. Evil does need nothing more to flourish than for good people to do nothing.

All who participate in the cult of biography should be murdered. There is nothing to be learned from a writer's biography, and that is in spite of whether you believe writing is impersonal, in itself contained, transcendent of time or place, and able to stand alone for the whole of some real or imagined fucking … Continue reading A Fictional Voice Shouting Into the Abyss Speaks Obliquely of Romantic Agony

Newspapers are written to hypnotize you. That's their method and their goal. All media are ruled by charlatans. News and information through media are all part of the confidence game. Information is really only about In Formation.

With bureaucrats having greater and greater control over, under and through education, literacy lessens at an alarming rapidity. Literacy is never the concern for bureaucrats. What the French have called alphabetisme is the target, the goal, the all embracing directive of, in, or from any program beholding to State funding. Bureaucrats never imagine that they need literacy; … Continue reading Bureaucratize

Hockey was once touted as the world's fastest game . . . I remember the old Garden on 8th Avenue between 48th Street and 49th street, I think, yes, I can see the marquee outside the front like a theater marquee, the lobby entrance with the banner reading, Hockey, the world's fastest game, or was it … Continue reading Re-Memory [Flash Fiction]

  To essay or not to essay, that might be a question, but how would it amount what the father of modern consciousness said? The question to essay or not to essay would beg other answers than the one our most famous Dane had queried. What do I swear to when I write an essay? And … Continue reading What Another You Does [prose poem]