Scenes

Not Going Gentle

For the past few months I’ve thought about little else, and I think about it gingerly: Dylan Thomas meant something more noble than this.

Alchemical Pursuits: Zosima Panopolis

Jordan was drawn to Zosima Panopolis from her first Mountain Pose. Who knew just standing could look so good? The flared black yoga pants and black tank top, the glossy raven hair cropped short except for a single scarlet micro-braid tossed over her left shoulder, the...

State of Grace

When we pull up in front of my parents’ house I notice the trees first. The almond whose slender shimmering leaves splashed my bedroom walls with pale green light as I studied Eliot, then Heidegger, then Knuth. The ornamental plums that stood at sober attention in a row along the side of the house, cracking their burgundy study only for a brief riot of pink in the spring.

Woods Woman, Part II

“Snow White.” The syllables spun forth from the king’s lips and onto her shoulders like an unwanted mantle as he stepped from his sleigh. Well, she wouldn’t have to wear it long. Regicide was a capital crime in the realm; if she were taken she could expect little more of her...

Woods Woman, Part I

The woods woman hated winter. Game was scarce and shy. Chill winds skittered beneath the door and seeped between the windowpanes. And though she cherished her solitude, weeks cooped up in a tiny cottage as blizzard after blizzard howled outside could drive anyone a little...

Reflections, Part III

The morning after his courting of Sylvie, Kleitos Leonidas rose before dawn began to pink the eastern sky, turned off the lights she habitually left blazing all night to annoy her neighbors and threaded his way through the oaks to the lake’s edge. The moon had gone down some...

Monastic Meditations

The New Camaldoli hermitage perches atop a mountain just south of Big Sur. The dozen or so Benedictine monastics who call the hermitage home earn a portion of their living from fruit and date nut cakes and a small bookstore and gift shop. But their primary source of income is a...

Wild Hunt, Part III

The brindle had been living alone with the Adam-children for six months when the fox hunters came. The Odin-daughter had passed on five seasons before and the Odin-son, lasting far longer than Cu Fail prophesied, three full seasons after that. He had warned the brindle of the...

Epistemological Exercise

A branch of philosophy that investigates the methods, limits, and origin of human knowledge. A visual document of a moment in time: a cloudy eighth of May at approximately nine a.m. in Sand City, California when a singular number of crab husks littered the beach. What can be...

Reflections, Part II

Sylvie should have been terrified at a strange man strolling uninvited into her house. But since she moved she’d suffered a scourge of frogs and a storm of owls, and he was handsome, and smiling in a manner a touch haughty but not at all malicious, and she found it hard to...

Dharma Twilight

Tucked in among pixelated orphan sheep and “Osama bin Laden execution video” viruses there it was on Facebook: “Clearly poised to fill in the gap that will be left when the legendary Bodhi Tree Bookstore on Melrose closes its doors in the Fall of 2011.” My gaze moved on,...

Wild Hunt, Part II

Although she could no longer hear the Adam-daughter’s movements, the old black dog knew by instinct and subtle vibrations that she had risen in the early morning light. The Adam-daughter looked puzzled and tilted her head in the manner humans adopted for their...

Reflections, Part I

Sylvie poured Kat more chardonnay and resumed her casual lean on the wrought iron fence rail. The lake – Sylvie’s lake now – stretched out before them, dark and still except for the glittering, gaudy reflection of the house – Sylvie’s house – in the water. Shortly after Kat...

The Old West Brick Road

Lee lost Faith the moment she touched her open-toed shoe to the Old West Brick Road. A gibbering fit, a stranger in a sedan. Witnesses saw her run into the Eldridge but she never came out. Not in an hour, a day, a week. In rare moments of honesty he admitted he lost her before...

Wild Hunt, Part I

The old black dog examined the newcomers with caution. The one her own size, young and beautiful and stupid with ostentatious flecks of gold woven throughout her fur and the white socks that turned humans into mewling puppies, smelled her sickness and barked a challenge. The...

Drone

He has no name and no past. This is not a cheap device to build unearned narrative tension, but a literal and genuine truth. Intoxicated by the beckoning brightness of ceanothus and daylilies he has drifted from his fellows and their afternoon ritual and is now irremediably...

Happier Times

Stocking feet hushed against marble and the gun a cool weight in his pocket, Anton crept down the hall, indistinct thumps and shuffles meeting his ears as he approached the study. The heavy door opened a bare inch at a time on its silent, oiled hinges, releasing a puzzling...

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