Alumbrar

Alumbrar

“Moonrise over the dock” by Arturo Donate is licensed under CC BY 2.0 My family and I are lined up on a pier at La Parguera, one of three bays in Puerto Rico where bioluminescence blooms. Within this sphere of yellow-washed lamplight, a bubble of people isolated...
Off the Hole of Death

Off the Hole of Death

Photo by Flausa123, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Have you ever seen two lovers being hounded down by Death? Go to Arkadiko Bridge on a Blood Moon night, and as clear as you can see this hand of mine in front of your eyes, you will see two embracing silhouettes...
If Time Is an Illusion

If Time Is an Illusion

“Then you can paint tomorrow any color you want,” Uncle Kev tells me while in Chartres, circa 2004, while walking below the flying buttresses and stained glass windows of the Cathedral, when he points to the tolling bronze bells and says, “First watch the sounds of...
Vatican

Vatican

You lose your friends somewhere in the first hallway. At the entrance, your eyes still dazed from sunlight, you were offered a choice between the Long Way Round and the Shortcut, and your friends asked for the Long Way Round, and you went with them because you were...
A Brief Treatise on How to Begin Anything Worthwhile

A Brief Treatise on How to Begin Anything Worthwhile

Looking up Sheldon Creek. Effectuated by making it this far without submerging my boots once in river water—deft side-skirting, hanging on of root as glacial braids of the Toklat guzzled Away and North, to Yukon or further mysteries, ten feet below where I clung to...
The Man in the Piazza at Santa Margherita Ligure

The Man in the Piazza at Santa Margherita Ligure

Photo by Mate Karoly / Shutterstock.com Nearly everyone else in the Piazza Caprerer was milling about or gazing at the 18th century Basilica di Santa Margherita, whose walls glowed the palest lemon in the morning sun. One man was not, he came from one corner of the...