Whatever shape reality takes is often a reflection of the world around us. Through the art of storytelling, we are able to understand our society, our culture, and ourselves better.
A Man of Class
Arthur threw down The Wall Street Journal onto the tablecloth. After pushing his soft-boiled egg and toast to the center of the table, he tore off the bottom right corner of the paper containing the story that prompted his revulsion. Then he grabbed his cell phone and...
Bubbles
She was walking barefoot, back and forth in the way too long corridor of her house and thinking: Sabuncakis must be closed by now, coffee shops must be packed with people, sea buses must be slicing through the dark blue waters and taking revenge of their usedness, and...
Trigger Happy
In photos of myself from that day, I stand with my right foot in front of my left, my weight leaning into the gun, just like Chris taught me. One eye squinted, the other wide open, focused. When I look at the photos, I feel even more in control than I felt in the...
Bonfire and the Match: Burning the Joint for Creative Potential
It was not quite midnight. The bleached out ball of the Alaskan sun was drooling over the Chugach while the summer waters of the North Pacific were licking the pebbles on our salty strip of beach. We had a ripping bonfire sending a twist of blaze into the washed out...
Tariq
My first day in Kani on the southern Saharan fringe, I met Tariq. His skin was darker than the sand under my feet, but not quite the burnt brown of the dust that blew from the west every afternoon, darkening the sky and burnishing the mud- and stone-walls of the...
Shifting Cultural Value—or—Tim and Woody Go to the Opera
Our names weren’t really Tim and Woody. When we were little, my cousin Jim and I occupied ourselves by pretending that we were lost in the jungle or that we were detectives on the trail of a criminal mastermind or that we were cowboys ridin’ across the prairie chasing...
IF YOU LOVE ME, You’ll Eat This
In my family, food is how we say, “I love you.” The meal we cook is a valentine. Eating every bit of what’s served is a return kiss. And this lover’s dance passed down to me. If I care about you, I cook for you. I learned this from my grandmother, “Nanny,” we...
“Unlovable” Thing
I could only watch in horror as he grabbed anything to stop her from moving. I wonder if someone else saw me struggling like I was seeing her but wasn’t sure whether to stop it. This thought alone made me hesitate next to the glass, stomach in a knot. Was he...
The Scent of Sun
Photo: The Longest Night: The hangers are often the last working during those endless hours of harvest, stuck inside air conditioned boxes while hurricane fans shoot kief in the eyes and the sun threatens to slip over the morning hills, crushing the possibility of...
Behind the leather curtain: BDSM in a sex-positive era
Inhibitions are life’s greatest obstacle to exploration. Push them aside, lift the veil, and you will undoubtedly find yourself. Curiosity carries with it a feeling of renewal. Yet the skid to the unknown can be nerve-wracking. The transition between what is...
