A woman in a black and white minidress and black spiked heels walked up to the podium. The crowd grew silent. “What we as a country have lost is our intestinal fortitude. I’m entering this race for the Presidency of these United States to Return America To Sanity...

 Everyone said that Paul was born under a lucky star. The sun followed him wherever he went. There was seldom a dark cloud. He was loved. His friends were strong and his enemies weak. He’d seen death. Some friends. Some family. It shook him but it didn’t stop him from...

  In East Mendocino where I live we are known for our woodpeckers. East Mendocino is a quiet little community east of our famous neighbor Tourist Mendocino. We have a good number of woodpeckers including Downy, Hairy, Nuttall, flickers, sapsuckers and our famous...

 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.   John 3:8 Born of the wind, wisdom speaks in whispers, howls, whistles, roars, bellows,...

  A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.   William Blake’s childhood vision   In the forest wood, among trees, without a path, trail, road, river, or star to find the way. Surrounded by dense underbrush, darkness and...

  Moon river, wider than a mileI'm crossing you in style some dayOh, dream maker, you heart breakerWherever you're goin', I'm goin' your wayTwo drifters, off to see the worldThere's such a lot of world to seeWe're after the same rainbow's endWaitin' 'round the bendMy...

  “I think it’s your shell.” “I have a shell?” “Of course, everything does.” “Everything?” “Well, clams, mussels, scallops, abalones, armadillos.” “Have you ever seen an armadillo?” “No, but I’ve read about them.” “That’s hearsay.  You can’t use it.” “Okay, beetles...

 ... Apologies to Albert Camus He will go down in history as Gilbert Jonas, chemist, entrepreneur, wealthy playboy, practical joker and inventor of Happy Pops, but he’ll always be just Uncle Jonas to me. My father, Albert, and his brother, Gilbert, grew up as orphans...

  But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.  Genesis 19:26 An ocean of fog lays over the headlands. It creeps up the rivers, slides up the trunks of giant redwoods, kisses mouths of ghosts who live in the space between sky and earth. A...

 To live is a curse.                    Baudelaire  [Apologies to Richard Brautigan and Milkail Bulgakov]   The dog had a strange human look before it was hit by the car. Elim had a similarly strange dog look an instant before the accident. The collision ripped a hole...

   Robert Parker is old. He doesn’t feel old. He’s alone, as alone as he can be. No family. No friends. They’re all gone. Dead. Bad luck, disease, old age—one damn thing after another. He’s joined the ranks of Eleanor Rigby, Father McKenzie. He never thought he would....

 They marched him up the steep stone stairs of the pyramid. He could barely lift his knees high enough to move from one stair to the next. They had drugged him. Mescaline, peyote or some similar psychedelic substance. All around him rang out the wild sounds of drums,...