Image: Mary Oakey The Boulder Weekly holds an annual 101-word fiction contest. Thousands of entries come in. I made the finalists list a couple times a few years ago. It’s good practice. Here’s a new one, that’s actually not fiction. Time lapse Walker packed for his Monday morning Munich flight by noon Sunday. It was … [read more]
Writing
Pardoning Saint Patrick
I’m a fourth generation Paddy. My great-grandparents came here in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, I am told from Cork, Ulster, and maybe some islands near Scotland, through Canada and Boston, then on to Colorado. I don’t feel Irish, nor do I have any particular affinity for Irishness. Or, at least … [read more]
Feeling my way along
February 28, 2024 I wrote this last week, wanting to dig down deeper and share something honest with you, something visceral and true. I read it now, and it feels like fiction, or someone else’s story. Clarity has returned today, self-doubt gone on hiatus. But last week it was like this: It’s dimmer now, the … [read more]
Freeing the Doer
It snowed a foot-plus in maybe ten hours Saturday. The temperature was warmer, from the high twenties to high thirties, yielding a heavier, wetter, upslope snow. Though we’re on a quarter-mile long dirt road in the mountains, we get plowed right away. But the porch, walkways, gravel driveway, and cars need to be cleared. … [read more]
Only ash and sand
Only ash and sand January 30, 2024 Possessions aren’t always what they seem to be. I first collected sand for this bowl, or an earlier version of it, from Isla Vista beach in Santa Barbara in 1974, down the cliff and the rocky trail from where I lived. It’s still the same sand, I think. … [read more]
An Italian Day in a Chinese Life
From March 10, 2010 I worked Saturday at my office in Kwun Tong, joining friends afterwards in rural Sai Kung for dinner. We walked to a small shop selling fine Italian cheeses, meats, olives, oils, and wines and enjoyed a light snack of prosciutto, formaggio con tartufi and marinated garlic, with home-made bread and a … [read more]