Category Archives: Beginnings

I’m most selfish in the morning. When the rim of the bright burning ball first breaches from the waves like a smooth, gray whale aflame, I go mum and stare until my eyes ache with bloody reds and warm glowing … Continue reading →

The road was long and straight.  And empty.  Northern Nevada is pretty desolate at 5:00 in the morning.  I hadn’t seen any other headlights for what seemed like hours.  Dawn was starting to show itself over the hills and the … Continue reading →

Peter was always annoyed that his last name was Garfield, since he’d been reading the Sunday comics since he could, and before then he’d always looked at the pictures. He read the cartoons last though; first it was the business, … Continue reading →

On the cracked, crumbling, cement sidewalk young Billy Conrad walked each day to the store on the corner and bought one dollar’s worth of bulk dark chocolate. As the years passed, the amount lessened with raising prices, but on the … Continue reading →

Three decades, two months, and one week later, careening off the washboarded dirt road near White Rock, New Mexico, Nico Fullerton Avett suddenly remembered the day his father brought him to discover ice. No, not ice, he thought, dry ice. … Continue reading →

The hills surrounding Los Angeles are lush and green, and are filled with windy roads connecting gated driveways.  The hills keep the smog in.  To the west, towards the Pacific, the lushness continues, but to the east, there is desert.  … Continue reading →

Those first days of college are filled with hope, aren’t they? The course catalog thick and heavy in my hands, a tome of endless, limitless knowledge. The classes in those pages could lead me on an infinite number of paths. … Continue reading →

First, rub the ripe, just sliced tomato onto the crisp, fresh bread. Smear in some olive oil. Pick some chorizo from the big, plastic bowls brimming with sausage made days before from local pigs, each farmer donating choice cuts of … Continue reading →

It was sunny and the wind was blowing from the west the day that Jack Mudge’s father died. He was a farrier by trade. A horse had reared up and the front left hoof came down square on his chest, … Continue reading →

“Wake up,” she said, and he pulled the sleeping bag from his face, letting in the still soft sun. “Now?” he grumbled.  “I thought we said 7.” “Well it’s 6, and you’re awake, so let’s get going.” He could hear … Continue reading →