(Fiction)
“It’s hilarious that I am in a dedicated duck restaurant, that I am in a restaurant dedicated to feeding people duck. I hate eating duck. I even hate a duck's appearance -- so long-faced and multi-colored. Nevertheless, I lie to everyone, and say I love duck, I say, 'I love duck, and I love to eat duck and I am interested in listening to you talk about how you love to eat duck and how you make duck wraps and how duck is not good as leftovers and how you cover your body in duck grease daily.' Did you actually say that? I think I may be daydreaming.
This is my daydream: you drop all your clothes on your bedroom floor, you walk into your Italian tiled bathroom, and you spray my vaporized duck grease all over your muscled body. Then, you rub the duck grease on yourself, look at your greasy figure in the mirror, and then call me to tell me how wonderful an invention my duck grease vaporizer is.” – From “The Duck Story”
“Tension, tension. Even the word is tense. Looking at your hands often, in order to focus. Looking at your hands until they become fleshy, peach, pixilated hands. You stare at them until they break off into layered parallelograms colored peach, light pink, clear, and white. You watch the shapes fuse back into regular human hands and you miss the pixilated hands. The parallelograms don’t come back. You flex your hands and see the long, hard tendons, the freckle on your pinky’s top knuckle, and you surreptitiously kiss the freckle in order to soothe yourself. You ask yourself, “Why do I have a hand obsession?”—From “Tension”
“It strikes her that the carvings lament time, interminable time, torture, waiting, time, patience, unbending time, straight lines of hell, one foot in front of another 'til death, death is better than waiting, time. Yet, five hundreds years sped by and Freya is feeling dark: sighing, rubbing her eyebrows, pinching her lower lip with her fingernails ('til it stings and stings). She questions herself, douses herself with sherry from Jerez de la Frontera, checks to see if her neck is still intact, lies down and stands up.” –From “Freya in the Dark”
"Last night, I dreamed of walking there again. I dreamt of the curving paths covered in trampled-on bark (Whose feet trampled that bark? Were they looking for the same things I was?). I dreamt of the dripping wet branches that would strike me in the mouth while I would push through to get to an open area. I re-lived watching the swans spar, trying to steal bread from one another, hissing and throwing up their wings in aggression. I walked back to the top of Parliament Hill and stood and stared out at the city, so far and removed from me.
In my dream, I traversed the Heath again, alone and in love. My heart felt as if someone’s hand ripped open my chest, grabbed my heart, and pumped it for me. I lied down and rubbed my face in the grass. I lost myself in the ponds, the hills, and the woebegone bridges to nothing. I explored the Heath in my boots, my backpack, and my ugly beige sweater. I emanated my unabashed, raw self. I felt scared and uncomfortable – but excited and stimulated. Nothing was familiar to me, nothing felt safe. Again, I experienced the feeling of being ripped open and consumed." -- From "Detox"
(Non-fiction)
“Alcibiades loves Socrates, in a very palpable and painful way. He admires Socrates’ mind, his soul, his thoughts, the way he interacts with others. He wants to connect with him by having sex with him. Socrates loves Alcibiades – but he loves scores of others too. In actuality, he loves all people of Athens. To him, Alcibiades is one of many; not specifically in terms of sexual conquest (Socrates is no lothario), but because of the sheer fact that he provides Socrates with a mind to explore and prod. This mismatch, the ugly older gentleman and the beautiful young man, creates a tension between what traditionally happens in the relationship of pursuer and pursued – it is counterintuitive to believe that a handsome, nubile young man can be sexually frustrated by someone like Socrates.”—From “The Seducer’s Paradox: Role Reversal and Enchantment in the World of Socrates”
"Emma kills herself because she refuses to engage life fully, to move forward from childhood behavior, and to participate in meaningful adult relationships. Flaubert's depiction of Emma Bovary's suicide--filled with images of vomiting, white powder, and black liquid--magnificently illustrates how living an unfulfilled life ravages a person." --From "Existential Crisis in Madame Bovary"