“Eventually, everything will be funny.” We were eating breakfast in the Palmer House. “It’s no gimme, it won’t just happen.” I’d lost my appetite. “It takes work. Listen to funny people, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin. Write out their jokes. And you take yourself too seriously. Write funny. Try self-deprecation. Exaggeration’s good. ‘This is taking a…

The hand moves, spirit of dance freed –unchained by dreams.

“I think we’ll postpone the exam. Instead of Friday, we’ll have it Monday.” There was a general collective groan. “That way you’ll have the weekend to study.” More groaning. Contrary to what they may have believed, he didn’t love to spoil their weekends, be it having them study for an exam or write papers. He…

By the time I’m done sliding through loose dirt, detritus, and gravel (like the shale mountain scree in “Dharma Bums”), I’ve rappelled from boulder to branch of shifting cliffside, my guitar and beer bag bouncing along for the ride. At the bottom is the moist cool sand arcing in granular waves of stones, pebbles, and…

My jeans were distressed in a time before it was fashionable. Faded now, this grease stain on the inside right leg was from an offer of a tandem joyride on the gravel and grey- dust roads of a municipality in a northern province of Luzon. This belt loop was torn open while stumbling past a…

Seeking distraction, I decide to tell the Buckaroo all I know about distraction, which amounts mostly to the mildly annoying sounds of civilization — aircraft, automobiles, and arboreal buzzers and blowers — and the pleasantly reassuring chirps, wafts, and fragrances of Nature. Obviously there are countless other kinds of distraction in this overheated commercial and…

worked the cane fields of Honokaa when his head exploded, the world clouded, his body weightless where it went limp– when the doctor suggested stroke, aphasia turned his tongue to stone. Scattered family members gathered, shattered by the news– the geometry of pieces mirrored indifferent truths, hope hung by shards. God didn’t wait for their…

He was wearing the cap decorated with pins, like many of them do. I walked down the aisle and sat next to him. I extended my hand out, thanked him for his service and told him my dad also served in Vietnam. He fiercely stared at me, then his wrinkled hand slowly welcomed mines. He…

I would learn of them when the holiday nights grew long and the cans and bottles emptied of Bud Light and Heineken. In languid Ilocano, my elders disagreed on the count of their siblings. Does one number among those who died infants or were stillborn? I am one of three name bearers, it is my…