Seven Truths and One Lie
Come Clean
(871 Words. April 25, 2003, 07:58 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Alright, the votes are in, the discussion didn’t materialize like I hoped, and I’m here to blow the lid off my Seven Truths and One Lie. But first a few prefatory remarks. First. Overall, I don’t think I accomplished exactly what I had hoped to. I sought to pull the wool over my own eyes and generate at least one…
The Verdict
(432 Words. April 20, 2003, 07:43 AM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
RECAP TIME! I hope you enjoyed my travel stories. To review: last Saturday I announced a weeklong special, Seven Truths and One Lie, in which I proposed a fiction-writing excersise for myself that you were invited to observe and comment on. Specifically, I was hoping to fool myself into crafting some fiction based on one of my many travel…
The Wind and Rain
(970 Words. April 19, 2003, 03:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(near the Outer Banks, North Carolina) The day after Christmas we drove out to the coast, the countryside slouching to card-table flats, tin-roof tobacco barns dotting the plain. An angry-looking white man in a rust-specked Cutlass insistently refused to let a black family in a late-model Ford pass, changing lanes with vitriolic swerves. We came across the first of the…
Depressions
(310 Words. April 18, 2003, 03:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Along the border of France and Germany, on the way to Calais) As we drove through the countryside, the green of high summer on the rolling hills, glistening like jewels in the sunlight, I noticed odd, rounded depressions in the verdant slopes. As we continued along, I began to realize they were everywhere. The plantings on these hills appeared to…
The Tumor
(993 Words. April 17, 2003, 04:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(under Japan, geography uncertain) The fantastic subterranean cities we passed through amazed me. Countless levels, each side of the corridor packed with every conceivable kind of business, from barber shops and restaurants to toy stores and pet emporiums, the streaming crowds of Japanese seemed, to me, to live their lives in the future, in the ground, in space. Some of…
The Toll
(994 Words. April 16, 2003, 04:09 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(pre-revolutionary Ethiopia, on the road from Addis Ababa to destination unknown) The rutted one lane road outside Addis wrenched the wheel of the four-wheel drive travellall, bucking and jouncing along as we headed somewhere that I was too small to understand. In hindsight, I suppose we were headed for Axum. My father was working with Ethiopia Airlines as an aeronautics…
Deltawinged
(929 Words. April 15, 2003, 06:18 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
(Llanberis Pass, Snowdonia National Park, on the border of England and Wales, near the northern edge of the boundary) We’d pulled the car over to read the sign which marked the border – there were no other cars around and the extremely broad valley through which the road ran didn’t seem so much like a mountain pass as a hill-pass…
L'Oasis
(726 Words. April 14, 2003, 04:01 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
(Ghardaïa, Algeria, at the northern edge of the Sahara, 300 miles south of Algiers.) We arrived after what seemed an endless drive through mountainous dunes, reddish gold and impossibly huge on either side of the blacktop. As usual I wandered away, avoiding social interaction, and came upon a door, weatherbeaten and green. It hung loosely, and peering through the gap…
La Cantina
(973 Words. April 13, 2003, 09:01 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(Outside of Guadalajara, in Nayarit, in western central Mexico) Every day that week I would wander out behind the edge of the garden’s irrigated area to stand on a narrow strip of dry, reddish-gold dirt at the edge of the whitewashed stucco. The wall of the building – indeed, the entire area of the compound – defined the crest of…
Come Clean
(871 Words. April 25, 2003, 07:58 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Alright, the votes are in, the discussion didn’t materialize like I hoped, and I’m here to blow the lid off my Seven Truths and One Lie. But first a few prefatory remarks. First. Overall, I don’t think I accomplished exactly what I had hoped to. I sought to pull the wool over my own eyes and generate at least one…
The Verdict
(432 Words. April 20, 2003, 07:43 AM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
RECAP TIME! I hope you enjoyed my travel stories. To review: last Saturday I announced a weeklong special, Seven Truths and One Lie, in which I proposed a fiction-writing excersise for myself that you were invited to observe and comment on. Specifically, I was hoping to fool myself into crafting some fiction based on one of my many travel…
The Wind and Rain
(970 Words. April 19, 2003, 03:38 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(near the Outer Banks, North Carolina) The day after Christmas we drove out to the coast, the countryside slouching to card-table flats, tin-roof tobacco barns dotting the plain. An angry-looking white man in a rust-specked Cutlass insistently refused to let a black family in a late-model Ford pass, changing lanes with vitriolic swerves. We came across the first of the…
Depressions
(310 Words. April 18, 2003, 03:53 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(Along the border of France and Germany, on the way to Calais) As we drove through the countryside, the green of high summer on the rolling hills, glistening like jewels in the sunlight, I noticed odd, rounded depressions in the verdant slopes. As we continued along, I began to realize they were everywhere. The plantings on these hills appeared to…
The Tumor
(993 Words. April 17, 2003, 04:14 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
(under Japan, geography uncertain) The fantastic subterranean cities we passed through amazed me. Countless levels, each side of the corridor packed with every conceivable kind of business, from barber shops and restaurants to toy stores and pet emporiums, the streaming crowds of Japanese seemed, to me, to live their lives in the future, in the ground, in space. Some of…
The Toll
(994 Words. April 16, 2003, 04:09 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(pre-revolutionary Ethiopia, on the road from Addis Ababa to destination unknown) The rutted one lane road outside Addis wrenched the wheel of the four-wheel drive travellall, bucking and jouncing along as we headed somewhere that I was too small to understand. In hindsight, I suppose we were headed for Axum. My father was working with Ethiopia Airlines as an aeronautics…
Deltawinged
(929 Words. April 15, 2003, 06:18 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
(Llanberis Pass, Snowdonia National Park, on the border of England and Wales, near the northern edge of the boundary) We’d pulled the car over to read the sign which marked the border – there were no other cars around and the extremely broad valley through which the road ran didn’t seem so much like a mountain pass as a hill-pass…
L'Oasis
(726 Words. April 14, 2003, 04:01 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
(Ghardaïa, Algeria, at the northern edge of the Sahara, 300 miles south of Algiers.) We arrived after what seemed an endless drive through mountainous dunes, reddish gold and impossibly huge on either side of the blacktop. As usual I wandered away, avoiding social interaction, and came upon a door, weatherbeaten and green. It hung loosely, and peering through the gap…
La Cantina
(973 Words. April 13, 2003, 09:01 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
(Outside of Guadalajara, in Nayarit, in western central Mexico) Every day that week I would wander out behind the edge of the garden’s irrigated area to stand on a narrow strip of dry, reddish-gold dirt at the edge of the whitewashed stucco. The wall of the building – indeed, the entire area of the compound – defined the crest of…
