I do at times skirt the borders of redundancy. How to repeat without the repetition becoming redundant is a skill. I avoid redundancy by transforming repetition into motif. Motif is only motif if not redundant; redundancy subtracts from motif, as there is a way to repeat things without them becoming motif and without them becoming … Continue reading From the Editor

I would never shove up my ass any of things that girls have shoved up their cunts only possibly to let in the air, as we hear the female protagonist say in Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," they let in the air. 

The 'we' you find anywhere in my essays is the conventional editorial we, the we of most social commentary, the we that sets before it, as a rhetorical strategy, you and I, not solely the collective plural. I am not separate from you, another form of the I and thou we all need to understand … Continue reading The Mask He Wears [Flash Fiction]

A Printed Copy of a Download from a Website by an Editor-in-Chief of another Web Journal Dedicated to Being a High Literary Review   I came across this from a friend who was present at the cafe meeting called by his Editor-in-Chief. My friend has for some time now been considering leaving the web journal … Continue reading What Then Should This Title Be? [Flash Fiction]

Charging someone with double homicide for killing a pregnant woman is an anti pro-choice ploy to get us conditioned to accepting a fetus as someone with rights independent of the mother. A bar tender does not have the right to refuse a pregnant woman a drink. Refusing a pregnant woman a drink in a bar … Continue reading Double Homicide? [Flash Fiction]

I do not want to discuss what a literary review is, although I should--discuss, not want to; I still do not want to discuss what one could be because I am only publishing this review for those who understand, and it would be lie in this context to say I am trying to convince anyone … Continue reading A Preacher in Search of a Choir

She says my soul is her blank slate, a clay tablet for her to impress. She passes through my heart again, what she isn't sure she believes. I call out her name in my dreams. I wake waiting for her to respond. She continues to hammer her tacks into my head. I ask her to stop. She says I never listen. jvr

The essays I have written. For as long as I can recollect having written essays. Fragmentation staved. Not starved. The duration of time involved is quite long already. Now it is nearly the fourth decade of writing. As if I were in some kind of solitary confinement. Everyone is in solitary in their skin. Tennessee … Continue reading Critical Condition

Pro Choice is Pro Freedom; this is self-evident. The right to choose is a human right; this too is a truth undeniable, unless one wishes to argue in favor of tyranny, oppression and general inhumanity. Human Rights are Women's Rights, universally and unilaterally. With respect for the self-evidency of the former truths, a woman's rights … Continue reading Pro-Choice is an Argument Broad and Variegated

He dedicated the following "to [his] . . . father, Dylan Thomas and Montaigne." That was it. That was all he said at the head after the title, herein the same as the entitlement to this presentation: "Centers and Circles; Post and Lintel." I do insist that the kind of critique or commentary or exposition … Continue reading Where Every Stream Begins

The prophet's message is prophecy. What profit in the prophet's message? The medium is the message, no? The prophet's message has been mediated by the divine. Mary is a prophet of Christianity. Islam and Judaism do not have their women prophets? Is this true? Mary is contacted by Gabriel. She is told what we repeat … Continue reading What Profits the Prophet in his Prophecy?

  Everything works together toward one single idea here, and that a new anthropology is due. I understand that anthropos is ancient Greek for man and so anthropology is the study of Man; or, as we once held blanketly, all human beings. Our focus might have been cultural, ethnic, evolutionary; nonetheless, it was anthropology, and … Continue reading Humanology

I There is no horror from the past we cannot aggrandize in our cultural blindness. I'm not here to insist that Americans are the only blind people in the world. However, knowing that blindness is a pan human condition regardless of the sightedness or lack thereof in any person of any people does not lessen … Continue reading Hysterical, Historical

I used to make corn meal pancakes when I was younger and still in love with corn muffins. In fact, I used to make the batter for muffins only a tiny bit thinner or sometimes the same consistency to pour onto a hot cast iron frying pan greased with butter. The medial 'r' disappearing in … Continue reading Journals, Journeys and Jonnycakes [Short Fiction of a Kind]

I do not want to debate the merits of my tradition, one I have been calling the Western Tradition for as long as I have had the acumen to critically read and write about this tradition when I was university student and since. I do not want to get into contemporary American diatribes or delusions … Continue reading A Review in the West

Now and then, here and there, in and out; binary inclusion, exclusion, dynamic duality rather than static dichotomy?

A literary web journal dedicated to the literary essay . . . dedicated to the proposition that all of humanity is created equal . . . that our differences do not outweigh our similarities or our sameness, even if they do out number them. What can any of this mean? I imagine there are some who … Continue reading Casting Words, Casting Stones

We cannot continue to pander to our corrupting need for ease--the manner by which we turn simplicity into the simplistic is also the one that turns from necessary complexity because we misunderstand this complexity to be complication. I do not want to sound like some reactionary nut who is going to spout the virtues, if … Continue reading Standardized Tests and Privilege Systems

I can spell cannot be the call out of our literacy. No it cannot.  A, B, C, D and so on, yes,  Alpha, Beta . . . what next? I do not mis-spell my name and so I say, I am proud of my literacy? Reciting the alphabet is not in itself spelling, and there … Continue reading Being Literate, Literate Being

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 Managing Pedagogy

Facts in themselves are never knowledge; knowledge in itself is never wisdom. Only wisdom will make you happy. This is not can; it is will, at least on the level of belief. I believe the former statements to be true, and I do hold these truths to be self-evident. Facts are a matter of arithmetic. … Continue reading The Pursuit of Happiness

No one I know knows how to know, only what to do to appear as if they do.

I wish I knew how to say more than I do about what I should say--and there are shoulds, regardless of how much the adolescent in us wants desperately to cling to the idea that there are no shoulds, another vain attempt at dismissing standards of quality to insure, although falsely, that everyone can be an artist, … Continue reading Art Must Be Useless

  I usually do not know what I think until I write.

Why do we imagine that an overall decline in literacy, the fact that almost half of our high school graduates leave high school reading below or seriously below 12th grade, does not affect every single job performed day in day out everywhere in America? It affects how police, firemen, bank tellers, bus drivers, elementary and … Continue reading Literacy Means Civilized

Language does not suffer the limitations we want to heap on on it. The fault is not in our words, but in ourselves.

Most ESOL students will not complete the second language course they have enrolled in. A significant per cent--nearing 20 to 25--will not even show up the first day. Some say it is because the classes I am referring to are free. Humans being what they are--who they are--we cannot value what we cannot put a … Continue reading All Too Human

Reading John Lahr's lucid, eloquent, articulate, informative, revelatory, endearing, passionate, loving, measured, beautiful, literary biography of Tennessee Williams and am loving it, enjoying it, treasuring it, waiting for it night in and night again, or day in day out on the train, on a bench by the bay near my home looking out over to … Continue reading The Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

  He says so much, writes so much . . . he forgets so much. Who is he? You ask again. I am he as well as I am I as well as I am we or you, the mirror appears again in recollection. How often do I refer to me as He? But what … Continue reading A Story Once by Another Name, Now Just as Effective? [Flash Fiction]

In his essay, "On Books," Michel de Montaigne opens with a precise concision of the essay form, whereby he writes that he has "no doubt that . . .[he] often speaks of things which are better treated by masters of the craft, and with more truth," whereby he end-stops the line with a period, only … Continue reading On Essays and Essaying

If The Essays speak for themselves, then who or what does Montaigne speak for, yes, a question begotten not made of the inquiry into what an essay does, what the essays do, have done, can continue to do for those who read them, from among those who read, and the inference must be clear that there is a … Continue reading The Essays Speak for Themselves (a preface to a collection of essays by an essayist who signs his work, “The Essayist”) [Flash Fiction]

Humanism is an idea, it is an ideal; it should remain a goal; it has been a tradition understood and cherished by the Publishing Editor of this Review. What has not been abandoned in these pages is a commitment to this tradition of Humanism, uppercase 'H' imperative. We know here at The Falling Leaf Review that the … Continue reading Ideal and the Human

Most of our attempts at righting wrongs in our society have resulted, perhaps only inadvertently, in wronging our rights.

To perpetuate the kind of elitist control of society, where 1% if the population controls more than 50% of the wealth, yes, Capitalism is more suited than Feudalism. Humans are always confusing their culture for nature, though, so economic systems being the product of cultures, it is inevitable that we will assume the socio-economics are … Continue reading Humans Always Confuse Culture for Nature

Capitalism is not more natural to humans than let us say Feudalism. Feudalism is not more organic than Communism or varieties of Socialism. Capitalism and Feudalism serve different social ends, if not because of this, different social needs for those whose ends are not directly or principally served. A society develops the system it needs … Continue reading Capitalism is not More Natural

This journal, with its pages of Essays and its blog, where some of the essays are initially worked out, expresses the views of its author, JVR, who is also the Publishing Editor, sometimes referred to as the Editor-in-Chief. The essays are social and political commentary, although not primarily or ultimately. They may be personal or … Continue reading More About Us

Where does this journal take us, this literary journal, this review of the literary essay, in some places cached as The Essay Review and in others boxed as The Falling Leaf Review, formerly The Essay Review? Where then does this review go, arrive, take us . . . clearly into the world of thinking as … Continue reading From the Editor: About Us at The Falling Leaf Review

The Falling Leaf Review is managed as a critical journal, and the writing is in the tradition of essay writing as inherited through a nearly five hundred year old legacy begun with Montaigne. I don't want to debate the merits of this tradition, nor do I want to defend Western Civilization as it seems to … Continue reading To the Breach Once More

The Falling Leaf Review is a literary web journal dedicated to the literary essay. I have expressed as much in other entries, here in the blog and elsewhere in the Pages.  There is one I recall, an essay in which I outline the guiding metaphysics of this literary journal, originally called The Essay Review (and … Continue reading From the Editor (4/15/15): More About Us

Humanism is an idea, it is an ideal; it should remain a goal; it has been a tradition understood and cherished by the Publishing Editor. What has not been abandoned in these pages is a commitment to this tradition of Humanism, uppercase 'H' imperative. It is in its pages that this journal needs to be … Continue reading From the Editor (4/14/15): A Note on The Pages of The Falling Leaf Review

Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. The Nineteenth century did not close with the coming of 1900; it came crashing down in the abyss that was the First World War. The politics of that prior century extended into the next, the 20th, and brought about the … Continue reading The Gravity of the First World War

A world without viniculture is not a world I would prefer to live in. The world does present a choice of life with wine or life without wine. Perhaps if I had never had wine, this question might not come up. I do know Italians and Frenchmen for whom wine holds no special place, has … Continue reading Civilization and Wine

Pornography is sexually explicit material intended to elicit erotic responses rather than aesthetic or emotional ones. This is not a judgement against eroticism, nor is it to imply that aesthetic or emotional responses are always preferable when sexually explicit material is the message.  Pornography, though, is not limited to the representation of sexuality. We like … Continue reading Off Stage On Stage

What was Freudian analysis but the Totalitarianism of the mind. Anything anti-objective, anything arational, is attacked by Freudianism. Freudian analysis systematizes western bourgeois mentality and presents it as human. What was Marxist analysis of history but the incubation of Totalitarianism in society. Marx himself was an anachronism, being Stalinist in his personal relationships before Stalin. … Continue reading Totalitarian?

The duality of public and private space, public and private selves with a many-selves Self has been shattered. Am I too quick to conclude hyperbolically? Overstatement and understatement are broad and contingent categories; they are often mutual and reciprocal in their intensities in spite of their broadness; their dynamic energies have co-influence. The bull's eye … Continue reading Public and Private

I Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. (I will repeat this in Part II.) I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor … Continue reading How Capitalism is the Metaphysics of Obscenity; a Diatribe

Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor do I agree that it is invariably good, … Continue reading Without Being a Marxist

I have to get back to my biography of Tennessee Williams. I haven't been in it since before we left for Philadelphia. What's it been now--almost a month of not reading it. I have read in the meantime other things, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Anne Sexton, Stefan Zweig, Lawrence Sterne--a few chapters of Tristam Shandy? Rereading. I … Continue reading Detained; or, Is There Such a Thing as Cubist Reading?

Duality is what it says. Dual is two. A duality is something in two; there are two parts, perhaps of one whole, but if os one whole, the sub-parts must be exclusive. When light can be said to maintain the properties of both wave and particle; this is duality. Duality focuses on the twoness of … Continue reading On Language: Duality Vs. Dichotomy

Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor do I agree that it is invariably good, … Continue reading Capitalism, Obscene

We like to make more out of the alleged mystery of language than is worthwhile pursuing, that is, worth the while of any intelligent person. Good Friday is Good because everyone who is native t0 the English Language knows that the antonym of the word 'evil' is good. The translators of Nietzsche understood this when they placed the … Continue reading Good Friday

We have a professional military in America of a nearly incomparable size, that is, greater than almost all nations with the exceptions perhaps of China and India. This professional military, even when many are career soldiers and might presumably retire from active service without entering the job market, is a feeder trainer of many bureaucrats … Continue reading In Itself American: Beta

Yes, it was and remains true today what Jefferson warned us about more than two hundred years ago: banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Banks are more dangerous to our lives and welfare (not food stamps) than terrorists or other nations or fanatical ideologies. Financial institutions are banking institutions the way KFC … Continue reading Banks

The coldest winter? The snowiest winter . . . polar vortices . . . superlatives were abundantly overflowing this winter. Cold winters in New York are not unusual; mild ones are not anomalies either. One winter colder than another is unavoidable; but we do get ourselves worked up over the superlative degree: yes, the coldest, … Continue reading How Winter, Spring and Superlatives Fall

Every writer is an author whether he is published or not. Being published does not give you authority over your text. Your hand holding the pen does that. [I still hold pens.] You do not need the Library of Congress to grant you copyright. The Library of Congress granting copyright only makes your legal claim … Continue reading Author and Authority

The blog portion of this Review is committed to being literary--and I insist on calling this website a review, that is, a literary review. It is important to do so. The latter notion of literary is used with all the connotations many of you might suspect are elitist. It is always elitist when literary is … Continue reading Web Log IX

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, nor do they necessitate quality or experience be present in those who are hired. Teachers are pitted against one another in program after program across America as management reminds teachers … Continue reading Good-enough is Never

Who in this world of looking on line, combing pages, or superficially skimming one site after another with little more effort spent on reading what is within the confines of the sites barely penetrated . . . what then happens with this ever mounting pile of words, rubbish, trash, gems . . . how to … Continue reading Web Log VIII

A man talks of a trip to Philadelphia, but not the view of Camden across the Delaware River from his hotel room, nor the view of the Charles River as he crosses on the Alewife Bound Red Line from Boston South Station to Cambridge, Harvard Square . . . what more, no more, to say or to write, I … Continue reading Who are You to Imagine Being in Philadelphia is Better than Being Dead?

I guess a blog is a blog could be the best to say about what a blog is; again, truth is found in a tautology. Yes, tables are tables and pigs, pigs; so then a blog is a blog, of course, but then it too is plastic in the way we can see in the … Continue reading What is a Web Log? IV

I do not write in a blog as I do in my journal, although I could and others do. My journals, as alluded to before in other entries, have characteristics different from those of most blogs. Audience for one thing is key--although writing to oneself in a blog is possible, I do not imagine that … Continue reading A Web Log Is

Can the people ever trust the State to do what is best for the People, ever establish protocols that insure the People are getting what they need most from the provisions of the State? No. Can the People ever trust that government administrators and leaders will ever do what is in the best interests of … Continue reading Weight and Counterweight

Entries on readings may also be found within, the kind I used to to do in university, keeping one journal of readings for each English literature class I would take, sometimes taking as many as five in a semester; but it would be what is usually expected in a journal of the conventional type. This … Continue reading Writing a Web Log

This review and its blog are not the editorial pages we are accustomed to seeing in our mainstream press, although these editorials have a lot in common with many of the entries herein sometimes. Either the blog entries or the essays in the pages section of the website often venture social commentary if not cultural … Continue reading Web Log III

  Yes, How many years I have been writing and publishing the blog and review pages I call The Manfred Revue is nearing a decade. More than a decade? It does not matter--it cannot--, the length of time. Any effect from that would have more to do with advertising than actual credibility or quality, the appraisal … Continue reading When and Where a Blog Entry Presented to You as a Letter From an Editor Becomes a Fictional Essay

The People must understand their role as the People and not allow the imposition of the State or the rhetoric and lies from administrators of State power through the agency of the government to usurp that role and force the People to opt for the more State serving role of a Public.

If more blog writing--good, bad and other--contributes to the further democratization of America, I am for that. I am not, though, for a debasement or deflation of literary values and aesthetic understanding. That would be a mistake--one that pits popularization as the most accurate synonym of democratizing, one where populism is the only valid expression … Continue reading Blogging for Democracy?

To blog or not to blog--here I go again; repetition becomes motif--that, in itself, another motif: the motif of motif. I have been blogging for how long now? Need I actually count? I started blogging with the October Revue, the sister view of this one. I still publish the O. R., I have even called … Continue reading Web Log

We understand the slogans we hear everywhere all around us, slogans for political campaigns, slogans for products sold through TV advertising, slogans from our teachers, our bosses, the bureaucrats from the city, state or federal administrations. Slogans are all around us, surrounding us, deafening us, really. We are deaf to the Truth. We are at … Continue reading More Observing Observed

A reflection back to August of last year . . . [8/19] On the D too long. The trains in this town are run by dispatchers who probably read on the 7th or 8th grade. How do reading level translate into competence and right action? Civilizations have always risen and fallen by and with literacy. … Continue reading Observing

Let it suffice to say, as I have said before and will likely say again and again in the future--this Review is a literary review, and by that, I mean the essays contained within are literature. By literature, I mean the result of a higher election in Letters--I do understand that there is more in the … Continue reading From the Editor

The most we get from our literacy is the literacy of advertising; the best is what is sometimes found in Hollywood script writing, itself a step up from advertising, but a fall from what I would call the literary--and herein lies an elitist prejudice of mine; although, I do not assent to the idea that … Continue reading Observant Observations

All informing by government sponsored education will carry with it the indelible stamp of in/formation; to inform is to put or place in/form. This is what information really is: in/formation. To receive information is to receive one kind of stamp of being put in form, formation. Freedom drowns and dies in the pool of functional … Continue reading To Inform or to Be in Form

Dogmas must always be scrutinized by any people wanting to be or claiming to be free. Democracy demands debate, but not endless ping ping of opinions that in the end must reach consensus. Americans need consensus because they have been taught to need, trained to masquerade as independent by disagreeing, all the while knowing in … Continue reading From the Editor

Mr. Williams is in broadcast and not print--yet each is all of a piece, both of them conglomerated, each one reciprocal of the other in the matters of managing the message. Print media and broadcast media are not separate in the news business, and it is business. America's business is the business of business, how … Continue reading Brian Williams is Indicative; From the Editor

Lenny Bruce was funny. Lenny Bruce was trenchant. Lenny Bruce was a master satirist. Lenny Bruce stepped on toes. Lenny Bruce crossed a line. Lenny Bruce did not cross any lines. He crossed every line. The lines to see Lenny were long. The Man came after him. The Man decided he was dangerous. The Man … Continue reading Lenny

The idea that consensus is necessary in a democracy has nothing to do with and mostly opposes democracy. Real democratic action disappears where the demands for consensus are imposed with the weight of dogma. The kind of consensus that societal norms demand in these United States is often the kind mandated by totalitarian societies, and … Continue reading Consensus, Nonsensus

In the case of most of America's Yellow Press--and what is this about the press being Yellow, you ask? Most news in America is Yellow--and please do not misread this through one or another mis-steps taken from our systematic under-education, especially in matters pertaining to reading and writing and what must be called literacy and … Continue reading The Desert; From the Editor

We used to say that when fascism comes to America it will come as Americanism--I do not disagree, but the real horror is that it will not be fascism or Nazism or Zionism or Bolshevism that comes as Americanism, whereby American will only be a veneer over what is essentially fascist, no.  America's brand of … Continue reading Americanism can be Totalitarian (An Assertion)

Is it the purpose of this Review to examine politics in general and politics as they are played out on the American stage both currently and historically? Yes, it is. We take our political responsibility seriously here at The Falling Leaf Review . . . to look again at what everyone has looked at, what everybody … Continue reading From the Editor

Foreword Hamlet is Hamlet; the play is the character as well as the thing in itself; title characters carry more than what they say inside them. Tom Jones  is Tom Jones; does it then mean that Tom Jones is Tom Jones? Not necessarily. It is different for Ishmael and Ahab; Moby Dick is Moby Dick; the looming oversoul of the … Continue reading The Editor [Flash Fiction]

Be warned, I tell you. Yes, be warned as we so often prove we love being. Yes, warned. We love to be warned. We are excited when warned about harm. We like being frightened by our media, titillated by a broadcast and print media insistent on overdramatizing the news, creating news based on the demands … Continue reading Attention! Warnings to be Warned; From the Editor

We can all disagree in this pseudo-democratic nation managed by power elites bent on keeping the masses semi-educated and semi-literate--but consensus in the end is the mandate. To disagree with mandated consensus is to be excommunicate and anathema, socially. The dogma of all Americans acting Americanly is to reach consensus after they disagree in any … Continue reading Disagree or Mis-agree

Do we intend to write essays about literature?For sure, we do; and about literary figures? Certainly, we will. About poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, theater, film and other media arts? Yes, yes, yes and so on yes. Will there be passages of biography included--there is always something of biography herein. In fact, everything any writer writes … Continue reading From the Editor

Would I prefer snow to the drizzle that seems terminally expressed by the color of the weather these last several days, a mood evoked by the grayness of today and yesterday and the day before that? Perhaps I would--what would I? Another question to beget other questions about weather and mood. My soul is romantic, … Continue reading Shading Gray, the World in Monochrome

Be warned--as we so often prove we love being--yes, warned; we love to be warned about harm, as much as we like being frightened by our media, titillated by a broadcast and print media insistent on overdramatizing the news, creating news based on the demands of sensationalism, irrespective of truth or value as news. News … Continue reading A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

How many days is it acceptable to let pass when writing a blog--is this a blog? Is it not a web journal, a webzine? a literary review on line? It is more importantly a repository of the literary essay as I have outlined the form in one or two letters from the editor, which is … Continue reading Another Letter from the Editor

Rhetorical questions are not withstanding--do not take the time to think of an answer, or even a response. Let it suffice to say, as I have said before and will likely say again and again in the future--this Review is a literary review, and by that, I mean the essays contained within are literature. By … Continue reading The Nature of the Review

Do we intend to write essays about literature?For sure, we do; and about literary figures? Certainly, we will. About poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, theater, film and other media arts? Yes, yes, yes and so on yes. Will there be passages of biography included--there is always something of biography herein. In fact, everything any writer writes … Continue reading From the Falling Leaf Review Staff

Do we here at The Falling Leaf Review intend to examine our social interactions and forums and provide commentary and critique? Yes, we surely do. How could it be otherwise? Isn't it a compelling logic carried to its conclusion by the premise: ours is a Literary Review? Could I extend any of these questions and … Continue reading From the Editor

Is it the purpose of this Review to examine politics in general and politics as they are played out on the American stage both currently and historically? Yes, it is. We take our political responsibility seriously here at The Falling Leaf Review . . . to look again at what everyone has looked at, what … Continue reading A Note from the Editor

The anniversary of my father's death passed recently without anyone in my home realizing it until nearly a week after. It was I who noticed we had missed it, but I did not say anything to anyone in my home. Our kid was home from college. It was among the last days he was home … Continue reading Remembrance is neither a Day nor a Date [a short-short story]

120 years ago this January 8th Paul Verlaine died at the age of 51 in Paris. Tom Verlaine was the lead singer of the 70s band Television. Tom Verlaine was born Thomas Miller. He took the stage name Verlaine after the French poet.  

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

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

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]

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

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.

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]

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

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]

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

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

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.

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]

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]

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

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

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

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.

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]

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

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?

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

We have collectively walked back into Plato's cave preferring there the shadows to the light of day we retreated from.

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 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

To say history is progressive is like saying the ocean is progressive. It's not.

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

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]

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

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.

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]

A diatribe found on the subway by the editor of The Commentarian Blog in the form of a spiral notebook entry printed in pencil, not HB, but much much darker, and I mean printed, not cursively written. It was dated the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, "a day that should be commemorated by every lover … Continue reading The Momento Mori of a Pimp Fiction]