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…

“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…

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…

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…

 —Bill Simpich; State Secret Affairs of State  Anna Wolfe 2025 Every time I walk into an elevator,  I still think of my brother Hermes, smartest guy in every town, everywhere we lived. Those early memories imprint themselves in our highly plastic child’s brain and never disappear, no matter what we tell ourselves about their ontological…

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…