Ballet Class

  So You finally made it back to Ballet Class. Listen. The Dancing Master is speaking. Her silver hair sparkles in the autumn light above Mount Tam. Listen. The Dancing Master is speaking. “You are in Ballet Class. Leave your children your lover and your family outside the studio. This class is for you.” So…

The Great American Car Trip

“Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again.”  Homer’s Odyssey Sometime in 1986 Dad explained to me the myth of The Journey of the Hero. It was the only six weeks I spent with my parents after leaving home when I was seventeen. My younger sister…

Who Has Five Eyes

Not too long after I learn to read in English, I am perusing a shelf in the public library. I am here by myself. I reach for a book just above my head, pull it down, and start reading it. There is a young man sitting in a college classroom. He is listening to a…

Pomegranate Seeds

I’ve knelt on the stone and eaten bread from the street with the oppressed classes and the opiated masses and all of their brothers marching feet…     Pomegranate Seeds daughter O daughter have you eaten have you eaten of the fruit from the world below? mother O mother I have wandered alone all night…

The Mexico City File

“He trained most of the listening post operators on how to make minor repairs.” “The intercept center has been a mystery for all these years since the assassination. Despite much effort, I have been unable to determine where the intercept center was located, other than that it was in a residential neighborhood and not attached…

the little girl files

San Francisco  1984 I remember, quite clearly, the first time I saw the apparition I came to call The Little Girl. I had just finished with psychology graduate school and I was working in a strip club in North Beach. I was sitting in Vesuvio’s, having a drink before I arrived at my evening shift…