“I remembered you’re vegetarian, so I made fish,” my boyfriend’s mother said, beaming as she heaped several chunks of the smelliest kind of dead animal onto my plate. She handed the plate to me …
John hesitated at the gate. His giddy excitement for this mission had been only somewhat dampened when he’d discovered that he would have to visit Hogwarts …
At a certain point in my PhD studies, I decided that this was not a degree. This was war.
In the early years of grad school, I lost myself in my work. I worked nights and weekends. I insisted on …
Cleopatra stroked the walls of her tomb as she had done a million times. The sensation of the stone against her fingers provided some entertainment, after all. She preferred her human form for these kinds of activities, since her …
Does each of us have one core fantasy, a single axis upon which our entire personality turns? The Enneagram is predicated upon this principle: it suggests that people can be grouped based on their worldview, or if you like, their …
Crastor collided with the ground in a blaze of pain. He saw lights. No, it was just light. It was daytime. Groaning, he rolled onto his back. Above him was a clear blue sky. As the pounding in his …
For the tenth time in the last five minutes, I looked at the clock. Just a couple of minutes to go before my appointment with the undergraduate advisor. I only had twenty minutes with her, and I meant to make …
Why bother examining our traumas? I mean, trauma with a little t, that is. Isn’t it a waste of time to brood over things we cannot change? To some, such retrospection may feel like needless languishing. To others, it is …
Father Duinn was tired. Today was one of those days when he felt his age. His joints ached and the cold penetrated him to the bone. The energy of the crowd did little to invigorate him. On the contrary, their …
I wouldn’t last long in a monastery. Actually, I lasted about four days.
It was an unconventional Buddhist monastery, and I’d become totally enamored with it before I’d ever set foot there. The head teacher’s talks, which I’d found online, …