Bench Cats of Bergen, and Other Stories

I made it. Took a photo over Germany of this making of it. Here it is, to prove that I wasn’t tearing at my hair or lying prone in the aisle or buttoning and unbuttoning Peter’s jean jacket for seven hours. No. I was sitting by the window, quite serenely....

Aqaba!

I’m seven years old. I’m very small, in the University Theatre seat; I’m clutching the armrests, waiting for the curtains to open. And then, at last, they do. They do, and the screen is dark, except for ten words: A long time ago, in a galaxy far,...

Shakes on a Plane

My fear of flying kicked in out of the blue—or rather, out of the smog—above Mexico City in 1994. My boyfriend and I had decided to embark on an English-teaching adventure in a city called Oaxaca, which we’d chosen based on a couple of paragraphs and a few...

Torrance…of Words?

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It’s such a wonderful, agonizing, Kubrickian sequence: the slow approach to the big wooden desk and the typewriter and the neat pile of manuscript paper. We’ve never seen what’s on the paper; all...

Bedazzled

The Pattern Scars has just been nominated for a Sunburst Award. This particular award is close to my heart. For a   couple of years, Lesley Livingston, Adrienne Kress and I lent our bespectacled, sequined charms to the Sunburst auction (photos unavailable, just...

Sound and Fury

The fifth paragraph, which begins “And that’s the point”, is replete with spoilers. Other than that, though, it’s just general diatribe. * I wasn’t expecting to love Prometheus. I’m not a rabid fan of the original movies, and I haven’t been...