Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Wherever you turn in the City of Angels, there are words to turn things around, bright words, trite, words, wise words. They may effervesce for only a moment, but they serve us to get to the next moment. There, the inspiring words are embossed on coffee cups, on bumper stickers, or held in place by souvenir magnets. This is...

UNITED STATES—His dog on a leash, Davy exits from the room, passing by the two other beds, one empty and the other occupied by a woman in catatonia. In the halls, there's a man in a wheelchair pushing himself along with his legs. Before Davy crosses to the gymnasium, cries reach his ears, "Nooo, I'm going to fall. I can't...

UNITED STATES—A striking invitation was sent out by Miriam, the girlfriend of Dave America who engineered the trip to Madrid to present our bilingual anthology, "80 mph." When we arrived at the literary bar in the Malasana neighborhood Thursday night, we were greeted by a mood different from that which met us at Tuesday night's story reading. The place...

UNITED STATES—There was a mute hum, outside the closed liquor store and the falafel joint. The brick facade of an apartment building confronted me with a riddle in its unyielding silent night, any cue of lives dwelling within absent. Something was different: the peace signs and hearts were gone from the windows, and the curtains were gone, along with...

UNITED STATES—Lead by curiosity. . . Really Sam’s story began when he had that $8000  burning a hole in his pocket, as they say. Due to his deep conviction that he was fated to make a name for himself, while wandering around the French quarter, he saw a dimly-lit alcove behind a muslin curtain billowing in the hot wet...

UNITED STATES—Giselle found herself on a date with Travis Knowles, who was almost as wide as he was tall. The very loud houndstooth design on his jacket could have been discerned from the nose-bleed seats to the end zone of the Colosseum. The very few hairs loyal to his head were painstakingly dyed dark red. This was kind of a...

UNITED STATES—Crying, moaning bitching, babbling... they all want to go to that elusive place called home. "Mom, you get brownie points for the steps you took," Karen says. Davy (to his sister): "I'm blown away. Those are the first steps she's taken in over two months. This is gonna help you to get home. And I think your chances just got...

UNITED STATES—Now the object of Jeremy’s final gran-slam charity, blubbered. “You must think I’m scum, hovering here all day scamming tourists. I don’t wish this. Believe me. I’m trying to go clean. You know my addiction got me into this dark rocky place. You’re too kind sir, you’re too kind. Giving me 50 dollars to buy all the java...

UNITED STATES—The old man’s last moments must have been hell: that of the embalmed soul during the first time at a nudist colony. One by one the members of the plaid clan came up and bare-handed took clumps of dust and rocks. At first Zorba did not know if it was part of a death ritual up there. Moments...

UNITED STATES—Sam Delaney must not have been a businessman at heart. As a class they are often encouraged to be psychopaths at the extreme, married to lucre alone, “success” serves to foster what our time would term psychopathic tendencies, to pillage, exploit, and plunder. After another pivotal encounter with the Bhagavad Gita conjured a soul who lives in a...