The War Writing: The activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text. Vacuum: A space entirely devoid of matter. There have been beginnings. There have been beginnings indeed. Whatever it is that you do, that anyone does, there had to be a beginning. I suppose theContinue Reading
When it’s time to open, share and leave the vacuum behind The temperature outside was well above 105. It was probably closer to 110. Believe me, you can feel a difference between 105 and 110. Hell, at that temperature, an even 100 feels almost cool. But, there I was, inContinue Reading
Easy does it: embracing the prolific times. I’ve been especially introspective in recent months. It’s probably due to a number of factors, none of which make a lick of sense when uttered aloud. Suffice it to say, I have been recollecting the past, my past, and for no other reasonContinue Reading
Listening to Advice and the Boy Scouts of America Admittedly I was very excited on my first day of work at the Cascade Pacific Council office. I was 26 years old, a fairly recent college graduate and a new resident of Portland, Oregon. It was 1999, January, and I feltContinue Reading
Bleeding Sheep and “Fish of a Nazi Haven” When we started up Umbrella Factory Magazine it was my desire to give a forum to writers. The best writers, if possible. We have not failed at that. It was also my desire to give constructive, and personal rejection letters to thoseContinue Reading
Nights in Portland, Oregon can hardly be considered sultry, even in the summertime. In winter, however, they are much less than that. The nights begin mid-afternoon and stretch on for well over fourteen hours. The rain falls. But occasionally, a clear night produces a sense of the wild in aContinue Reading
It’s been ten years, or thereabouts, since the night Eric Driskill and I got good and drunk and had to climb through my bedroom window when we got locked out of the house. How we landed up at my house and without my keys is a question of countless whiskeys.Continue Reading
I have been blessed with ample time to write. I will not lie about this. I have had all the time in the world, and I have used it wisely and I have frittered and wasted it away. I have burned hours like matches and I have spent entire weeks,Continue Reading
Ruff, Matt. Bad Monkeys. HaperCollins: New York, 2007. Brown, Rebecca. The Dogs a Modern Bestiary. City Lights: San Francisco, 1998. Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. City Lights: San Francisco, 1959. Thompson, Hunter S. The Rum Diary. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1998. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. Grove Press:Continue Reading
It’s probably safe to assume that we made through another twisted apocalyptic debacle. The western death wish superimposed on the Mayan cosmovision I hope goes by the wayside like Y2K, Hale Bopp, Red Dawn, solar super storms and all other freeze dried end of days nonsense. But with 2012 gone,Continue Reading