A Taste or Two

Appreciating Erikson's Sword and Sorcery

Steven Erikson of the Malazan sword-and-sorcery novels is a damn fine novelist.  He can write character like nobody's-business.  I wonder how much genre-thinking obscures the true measure of his worth and contribution to that grand old ideal, the Commonwealth of Letters.

For those who know . . . Whiskeyjack--or Kalam-- that's all I have to say . . . right?

Double Trouble II

The cashier at Philz told me I was a dead ringer for her uncle.  His name is Mark Wahlberg, but not that Mark Wahlberg.  I'm still reeling that (once again) I'm not unique.

(My own mother once told me she'd seen my double at the grocery store.)

Dream: Out Into The Garden

Quite early yesterday morning I had one of those teaching dreams turn into one of those deceased-parent dreams.

I was helping a student, though I didn't have the right handouts on hand, in a lovely office: old wood and sunlit glass, more spacious and less cluttered than my actual office, with French doors to a most lovely rose garden.  Anyway, I am helping this student grapple with his research project when my father, many years dead but not in the dream, appears in the doorway.  He is dressed in a white shirt and khakis.  He gives me the barest of glances, but isn't rude, as he walks through my office to the French doors and out into the garden.  I tell the student that's my dad even as I realize--in the dream itself--that my father's dead.

Looking through the French doors, looking for my father, I awoke.

Work, Work, Work

English 1A: Non-Fiction Emphasis

Casey's The Devil's Teeth;
Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft;
Ebbesmeyer and Scigliano's Flotsametrics and the Floating World;
Greenberg's Four Fish;
and London's The Sea-Wolf.


English 1B: Intro to Literature

Appelbaum's English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology;
Hegi's Floating in My Mother's Palm;
Nunn's Tapping the Source;
O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night;
Shakespeare's Macbeth;
and Shelley's Frankenstein.

Salt Longing

Looking back: 8/8/16

Double Trouble

I've been teaching doppelgangers in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, so why not one of my own?
Matt and Mateo.

You know, my mother once told me she had seen my double earlier in the day.
I was rather affronted.
I mean, my mother, me, a double?
She should have known better, don't you think?