If there’s ever been a constant in my life, it’s been books. My grandparents had a massive collection and my mother and grandmother regularly took me to the library. I remember the day I was finally old enough to get my own card. It was exciting, particularly for such a shy and nerdy kid. Right … Continue reading I like big books and I cannot lie…
I think I’ve said in an earlier post how much I love the artwork of this holiday. Every year I swear I am going to decorate and every year I fail and instead offer up a morbid epitaph. The “calaveras literarias” are becoming a tradition for me. And, yes, tonight is grocery night. And, yes, … Continue reading Happy Days of the Dead
Poe invented or re-envisioned several genres including horror, detective, and science fiction (Poe possibly supplied Jules Verne the idea for all those hot air balloon fictions!). While not discussed as much, he was also a purveyor of the hoax. Our story for this assignment, “The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar,” is one of … Continue reading Poe’s Hoaxes: “The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar” Assignment
You can read a recent short story of mine here. The story started as a dream script that I would present to Jan Svankmajer, one of my favorite directors. In a way, my attempt was to give an interior monologue to a puppet or character in a stop-motion film. Much of Svankmajer’s work has no … Continue reading A Failure to Communicate
Losing my zen when I complain of rain. Atonement: A haiku for my grandmother who said I would be a teacher, but never saw me become one. I miss her homemade bread, soup, and pasta and the way she laughed. And, really, she’s one of the reasons that I have very little to complain about. … Continue reading Haiku Humpday
Of course, it was an English teacher. We’ll call her Ms. G. Oh, what a crush I had on her in sixth grade. All it took was for her to talk about a book in class and I would go read it. One day she happened to mention a book by Stephen King. I knew … Continue reading Happy Halloween
Even though my “to-do” list grows by the minute, I needed to take some time to write and hopefully get back into a weekly rhythm. Summer has been busy, mainly music, music, music. I played on two very different recordings and will be excited to hear what happens with them. And, I had a little … Continue reading Summertime is past and gone
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ~from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman I couldn’t help but notice that after I posted about reading more nonfiction, I posted about beginning The Iliad. So it goes. Thinking about Whitman also gets me thinking about his catalogues … Continue reading Never Listless
My life rarely works the way I think it will. Maybe that’s actually normal, I don’t know. Grad school was interrupted the first time by my grandfather’s cancer, then interrupted later by my dropping out, then continued much later after realizing that music, particularly the music that I like to listen to and to play, … Continue reading the post about not posting
Stephen McClurg 