They don’t like the sound of gunfire in the streets, the staccato echoes of shattering glass. Their faces are not bright with triumph in the light from burning buildings. They own no megaphones, and keep no prisoners in windowless basements. But none of this makes them any less dangerous. The upheaval these people instigate comes… Read more »

Grim-faced and determined, he passes the tools of his trade amongst the crowd that is gathering at the end of the pier. He offers the devices of his entrapment for their careful inspection; he doesn’t want there to be any question that what he is about to attempt is merely some street corner chicanery, some… Read more »

. . . a woman is awakened from sleep by a brief exchange of gunfire on the street below her bedroom window. There is a banshee screech of rubber tires on summer pavement. There is the sound of hysterical, improbable laughter, the sound of a screen door flying open, and footsteps receding into the night…. Read more »

1) Eating noodles in a red vinyl booth, we read our futures from a tiny paper scroll decoding the intricacies of the Chinese zodiac. We found out it was a good day to buy real estate and fish. We found out we would be lucky in love, but someone we trusted would prove false. We… Read more »

From a base in the desert, glowing with industrial light, scientists shoot a probe into outer space with tokens of greeting from the human race. There are pages of sheet music, some recordings of Mozart and Louis Armstrong, some classic black-and-white films. There are photographs of the Taj Mahal and ancient pagan stones on a… Read more »

On grad night we were third-rate earthbound astronauts. We were driving our rusted-out rockets, navigating beneath icy galaxies. In our protective suits of Buzzcocks T-shirts, naiveté, and vague aspirations, we free-floated around the light of campfires on secret party beaches. Beyond the top of the dunes, on the edge of our mental horizons, a future… Read more »

When I younger, my soul was something I took for granted. I would think nothing of sharing it with the magpies and the squirrels, with the stray dogs that came to beg scraps of food at our porch door. I would scatter it on the wind, and spread it like ashes on the surface of… Read more »

I remember this city when it was something new and strange to me. That was when the air was filled with the stench of dragons, and every windstorm was the ferocious beat of their mighty wings. Those were my bohemian days, living in the one-room apartment on the edge of Chinatown. There were rumours of… Read more »

The human consciousness is an immense body of water, an ocean of immeasurable depth. We carry billions of tide pools in the delicate bowls of our skulls. At night, if you put your ear to your lover’s head, you can hear the sound of foghorns blowing, of waves lapping at a distant shore. You can… Read more »

Imagine you are writing in the dark. You are writing in a darkened room. There is no window, there is no light. There is one naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room. The light bulb has been turned off. The light bulb has been turned off, but It’s of… Read more »