The Ghost in the Cloud

Science fiction is kind of a new genre for me, but one that seemed suited to express some ideas that I was trying to think through. I was watching the series called “Transhumans” and found it to be a very thoughtful and provocative series on science and the many possible options it may present to us for changing us human beings from what we are, improving us so to speak, and making us better, stronger and healthier. Among the many ideas discussed is in this series is the possibility of “uploading” one’s consciousness into cyberspace where one could presumably live forever with increased consciousness and memory. I found the idea ridiculous on one hand, and very disturbing on the other. This story was taken from trying to think through one possible result.

Red Pen

“Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
John Donne

O, Red Pen,

much maligned, mark in blood, the battle ground of
academic paper that would be
black and virgin white.

Expose the naked hypocrisy of my mediocrity;
and break, like Hymen, my dull, dun draft with
the marks of your passion:

bloody me, cut and write on me,
wound me to the edge of Death and
through Perfection, make me free.

Elizabeth and the Cinnamon Buns

Just as I used to tell my son Peter the Pirate stories. I also used to tell my daughter Elizabeth Cottage Stories. This is a story I told her many times although it changed and changed with every telling until it emerged in its final form. I have forgotten many of the stories but they all began the same way, “Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a cottage on the edge of a meadow…” and so forth with a very long string of prepositional phrases that she didn’t seem to mind too much. The vocabulary was a reach for a girl of four, five, six, seven and for however long I would tell them, but then she has an excellent vocabulary to this day and I cannot help but attribute that to a love of words and a love of stories for all the years of telling them to her.



The stories are told with a slow steady pace as if there were all the time in the world to tell it. After all, what is the use of a story if the real reason is not just to be close, to spend a good deal of time together, and to enjoy the comfort of loving and being loved?

Sultan's Farm in Al Wathba, UAE

Recently a good man by the name of Sultan Al Q’basi invited me to go out to his camel farm in the desert in an area of the UAE called Al Wathba. I accepted his invitation and he picked me up in his pick-up truck. His little boy, Ali, was with him and I always enjoy children. What I discovered when we got to his farm was that I was spending time with true Bedouins, modern Bedouins, but real Bedouins. I used to look at the pictures in the National Geographic from years ago. My father had a collection going back to the thirties and the forties. I looked long and hard at those pictures and a strange desire to go to such a place and see such people was in me. I never thought I would actually go and find them.

The Bedouin left those pages long ago and now, in the UAE, they are wealthy and live in fine big Villas in the city, but the men I was with still keep something going of the old culture. They told me they go out to the farm almost every night like this, as we sat around the fire drinking gawa (Arabic coffee made with cardamom), dates, and fresh fruits while waiting for the servants to bring the chicken bryony. It had been a wonderful afternoon of finding out about camels and training falcons. When the Pakistani and Indian attendants brought the bryony on a large silver communal plate, the Arabs taught me how to eat with my fingers by mixing the yogurt in with the rice and chicken and wadding it up into a ball to eat by hand. They offered me a spoon, but I wanted to do it the way they did it. I felt rich. I felt that I was involved in a true experience of their culture that no tourist could ever really get. It was a wonderful sample of Arab hospitality. I loved the falcons, the camels, the kettles and teapots, the food, the night sky and the full moon, The sand and the desert expanding out seemingly forever. Every night? I thought, out here, every night with good friends and plenty of gawa, good manners, and sweet arid desert air. Now that is the good life.

There are so many prejudices Americans have about the Arabs, but my whole experience with them here in the UAE is that these are some of the most peace loving, kind, and generous people I have ever met.

Willow's Dance

Willow danced before the moon
With her arms outstretched and waiting
The moon he saw her dancing there
And took her for the taking.

And said “I’ll dance with you a while,
Until the dawn starts breaking,
And spend the night with you fair maid,
Until the sun starts waking.”

“O may the sun then never wake!
That sun then I’ll be hating.”
“Nay, say not so” replied the moon,
“It is his life I’m taking.

But come and dance with me at night,
Engage in merry making.
And love the night and love the stars,
And take life for the taking."