writing samples
(take as many as you'd like; mostly rtf files)
spirituality
Amos the Transformer
For a semester-long independent study, I investigated the literary qualities of prophetic texts, ultimately narrowed to Amos, especially his rhetorical methods and how he shocked and awed his audience.
Amos provides so many metamorphoses in his bricolage, Israel cannot help but to notice the disparity between the two sides. Amos's mountain of transformations leaves his audience quivering in fear of the Day of YHWH and his wrath. He staggers their prior throughts that YHWH would come with blessings and mercy, exhorting them to amend their ways and return to faithfully following the covenant. In the end he even gives them a promise of blessing and mercy - eventually.
I was most impressed by a connection between 20th century culture and a 7th century BCE prophet. Read the whole thing if you're bored and/or curious how this Israelite herdsman-turned-spokesman relates to 1950s French hipsters. Or just understand that each creatively turned their respective targets' words against them (détournement).
The Unbearable Lightness of Yahweh
While the Bible isn't really the most comical of all literature, it holds quite a bit of irony. In fact, Christianity is based on it (serious theologians prefer the term "paradox", but I'd rather see the humorous side.) This meditational essay explores God's cosmic comedy act, starting with Abraham.
He promises an aging, sonless man that his descendants will outnumber the stars. Decades pass, no kids arrive. This guy is named Abram, which means "exalted father", a nominal irony that surely earned him bushels of jibes through his first, childless century of life. To up the ante, God throws in another "ha" by renaming him Abraham - "father of many". Surely he was the stooge of Sodom and Gomorrah (although the tables later turned on them).
Ultimately, Jesus is the essential ironic character, rife with shocking juxtapositions which are simultaneously laughable and profound.
Baby Got Back (to Religion)
I actually turned this in and did not fail the course. The assignment was to assess a song as a religious expression based on various religion scholars we had studied (Durkheim, Eliade, Tylor, James).
Clearly he would regard any piece of earth trod upon by a woman with hefty hips as sacred space, and any time spent with such a lady would be sacred time. But his verses also demonstrate religious expression in Durkheimian terms. He emphasizes the role of community celebration of copious gluteals in his second line. "You other brothers can't deny" that women who fit the description laid out in the song are very attractive, though Mix-A-Lot is far more eloquent (not to mention graphic) in his illustration of the sacred object. His intent is clearly to show how females with fannies will bring together men, creating a veritable church celebrating the virtues of the derrière, which could even be called an axis mundi.
Needless to say, I got an A.
Food
Stranger in a Strange Kitchen
In Nicaragua, I had the joyous occurrence of cooking with a native Nicaraguan in a native kitchen. Chopping onions, frying tostones, and sweating around the wood-burning stove, we used food as a conduit to relationship and communication, despite our mutual inability to speak the other's native tongue.
After discussing her home, she asked about mi familia. I stammered about madre and padre and hermano, but she looked puzzled when I had finished. "Esposa?" she inquired. "Esposa?"
I laughed, "No, no esposa. No novia," affirming my full bachelor status. She was stunned. A mid-twenties male, with no apparent defect (apart from the non-masculine affection for cooking), gainfully employed, and completely single. Jessica was called in not so long thereafter, and I noticed a few more smiles from other women around the household. But maybe they were just laughing at the gringo de la cocina.
This has been submitted a couple of places, but remember folks, you saw it here first.
Beerstory
This unfinished work started as a explanatory guide to homebrewing, but ultimately overwhelmed the information with personal narrative, charting my movement from teetotaling to homebrewing.
I discovered He'brew: the Chosen Beer; Arrogant Bastard: an aggressive beer that is too good for you; Two-Hearted Ale: an India Pale Ale fit for Hemingway-esque expeditions; Nosferatu: the beer with a wicked bite.
Beer won my heart because it is fun. It does not take itself (too) seriously. Some breweries do; they make very serious beers, very important. They can be great, but they always fall a bit short of complete entertainment. This is why German beers rarely excite me. While I must admit a certain reverence for a nation that upholds a law about how beer should be made, I also shrink away from such a restraint on creativity.
I ought to craft this into a real work, because I love writing, I love beer, and I love writing about beer, but I don't do it enough (also true of writing in general). This smells like an upcoming city feature.
You, Julia Child
A lovely villanelle describing the artistry of cookery.
If anything, French food is finer than art:
Each entrée uniquely reproduced like Rodin's Penseur,
Brooding, to continually stand apart.
It's not a strictly traditional villanelle, as I don't just repeat the first and third lines of that opening stanza, rather riffing on them throughout the full poem. I just hate being told what to do.
the creative type
Flora
A whimsical short story. This paragraph opens the tale and molds the fanciful bar in which various dreams and debauchery will transpire and transgress.
They turned the neglectfully burned apartment into a garden bar. (It had been a residence due to some schizophrenic zoning category. The most revelrous of young men idolized it for their dwelling. Its destruction was forewritten from the morning of its first rent.) Ashes plowed into soil, fire-wrought fences became trellises, and Flora grew into an urban bloom, returning its site to the immoral purposes originally intended by the city council of old.
The full story features inebriation, flirtation, cunning linguists, and the greenest concept of a bar ever.
Sailing to Geriatrium
In a formal mood, I tried to write a sonnet. This is what happened.
This here's no country for old men who sip
Chablis, babble of rain, and calculate
The hours until they die. This land is fit
For youth that grasp the strength for woe and hate.
My poetry teacher was moved by the bitterness and angst but didn't fully grasp the reason behind such sound and fury. What can I say - it was a tale told by an idiot.
Fall
This far too realistic story started with the simple phrase "crisp maple autumn" (and it literally does start with that). It actually was autumn, so I worked repeatedly on this as I repeatedly patronized a restaurant with an altogether too attractive waitress.
Kites don't have propulsion; they just sit there, waiting for you to do something. Of course, you can't, because you just sprinted to drag the sheet into the air, and damnit if you're going to try some stunt that will snake it right down again. With any luck, you'd pound its nose into a picnic table, splinter the cross frame, drive home, run two red lights, and get two moving violations from the same cop.
The story turned out decently, but the waitress turned out to be a lesbian. So it goes (for me, at least).