Miller Time

UNITED STATES—“As I said before, the killer saw something so traumatic that it triggered cognitive dissonance. He blotted it out of his mind or thought he was dreaming. What they saw before fleeing the crime was that the victim of the hammer-blow was someone identical to himself. Identical to the twin brother given up for adoption that the killer...

UNITED STATES—I was flush in confidence, soon to complete a second draft of my screenplay, “The Persecuted,” on my Olivetti portable that fit snugly atop a sun-bleached street find Art Deco table, positioned by the driveway window where my eyes could wander to the tops of the palm trees tall my dreams. I had made a sweet deal to...

UNITED STATES—Meet Eliza’s accomplice: Roger worked for a production house in Hollywood and had slickly edited together breaking news flashes about a terrorist group that was going to release a geriatric bomb in different parts of the globe. From the Hollywood Hills to Lake Cuomo, in Italy. Flashes appeared of people in black ski-masks that revealed only their eye-holes...

UNITED STATES—I reviewed my diary from 1989-90 and found an entry that divulged much more about the weather and a prize fight watched on television than what I tersely referred to “an interesting proposal.” The proposal was a plane ticket to Amsterdam and a job packaging opiates to be sent back to the U.S. At the time I noted,...

UNITED STATES—When I was in Mexico, a place where time-capsules have a better life expectancy than in California, I would come across these drug stores, the would be faded and filled with all kinds of merchandise, and I would close my eyes and there was that smell. Of buffered aspirin and Maja face powder and hot –rod magazines. And...

UNITED STATES—Indifference is freedom from our own capriciousness, a pivotal quality for cultivating life success and industriousness. Indifference means being unenslaved by outcome. Being open to all the charming and not-so-charming possibilities multiplies the chances for contentment. Tony de Mello (inspirational wiseman) compares it to ordering soup at a restaurant. You have your heart set on French onion soup,...

UNITED STATES—The apple red Subaru wagon with Nevada plates that expanded my world—there was the court circus, dunning tenants, showing rooms and it made possible taking part in “Maxtla,” a stage play of a doomed prehispanic King, pre-Cortez, pre-Spanish—even though it was presented in Spanishby the Bohemia Theater Group. To a great extend the group WAS Marta Esther Main,...

UNITED STATES—He was starting to nod off on the freeway. A taillight and ghost tree whose branches twisted half a mile down the road, fused into a solid three-dimensional object he jerked the wheel to avoid. Now and then he blinked and lost seconds of roadway. He weaved, the bumps on the lane divider trembled and shook the car's...

UNITED STATES—It is ironic. “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” the epic comedy often dismissed as juvenile or lowbrow by folks who consider themselves aficionados of British comedy. It was a Missouri-born American who joined a Canadian regiment three years before America got into World War II. After the war, Bill Rose stayed on in England and penned...

UNITED STATES—I have friends in high places. One of them is Jesús of Hollywood. He recently told me I was due a big payday. That reminded me of a motif running throughout the house management days. That would be the seductive idea of having it made. The quixotic idea of 'having it made' comes from gazing hungrily and enviously at those...