Breakfast By The Sea, Santa Barbara Breakfast. Open patio. By the sea. Thinking of dreams and dreaming. Feeling absurdly blessed. I look up and see a school of dolphins swimming by, black rounded shapes with startling upright fins rising above dark blue water then sliding down again. […]
All posts filed under: Essays
Saturday Night Sushi alla Romana By Tej Rae
At the next table, a single dad expounds on the Kennedy years to his daughter, the Italian half of what was once a whole. Single fathers grasp at time, unlike the father at our table, who lets it run through his hands, a slippery eel […]
Going Back by Anita Lekic
It was April, 2002. I contemplated my impending flight to Zagreb with Croatian Airlines with a sense of foreboding. Would I speak English, which I tentatively think of as my native language, or the language we routinely referred to as “BCS” (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian—a […]
Cheese of Goat, Butter of Cow by Elizabeth Templeman
Notes on Travel, Language, and Communication “What means draga?” I ask, with a stunning reduction of the syntax I love and take pride in maintaining. We’re visiting Moscenicka Draga, a seaside town in Croatia. It’s quiet along the square in these early weeks of May, […]
A needle in the African Haystack by Kevin Cheeseman
“It looks like I am now the African and you the European” he says, arms folded over a dishevelled white t-shirt, shoulders perched against a Karite (Shea) tree. The butter fromwhich soothes the calloused palms of African drummers. Fabrice steps in as translator for a […]
The Reykjanes Peninsula by John .A. Barrett
Iceland – The Reykjanes Peninsula With my wife Sue, we stand on the southwest edge of Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, the only place on earth where the mid-Atlantic Ridge is visible above sea level. This, bordering the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, that float on […]
