Banana Leaf Afternoon

Sipping a bit of the mix as I wait for this treachurous sun to fall. Here watching bananas grow. It fills everything we are with heat and humidity. The wraparound Victorian glimmers, a mirage of rotating fans that endlessly gives off the color green (shown to the side). The puppy plays about and barks when people move in and out of the scope of the porch.

Hoping for some rain on these planks. We so much prefer rainy days, with a cloud of grey (perhaps even black) chaos moving from the south. Always from the south it seems. Funny how every Lilith that comes through the Atlantic Alley starts off as a tropical depression.

Sip of cola and rum in tribute to that history, begging for a little bit more time as summer quickly dwindles. If only we can measure the months climacically rather than by the calendar. Summer vacation here in New Orleans would nearly last a blessed lifetime.

We sip again, with a drip to these pages, crinkly and grey in the background. The hours wasting by. Tonite I go to a friends house to translate for him. A Colombian arepa Carnival straight from Baranquilla.

But for now we must toil with the afternoon, and milk it for that sweet necatar called free time. For me, more valuable than money

A Reading Autobiography I

"Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and
the gleaming cities, and the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was
an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world
like blue mantles beneath the stars..."
-Robert E. Howard

Some people begin their essays with a profound and complete quote, summarizing an idea in one sentence, or simply saying 'look how much I know'. What I placed above is half a quote, words that begin the epic tale of a thick muscled and melancholy warrior, Conan of Cimmeria. I tacked the words up there not because I see myself as well built or even sullen. The tone, the words, open the reader to a world filled with imagery, color, fantasy, and adventure. They open the mind like an eye facing the dawn. That is how I always like to read- especially as an adolescent.

As a teenager, I suffered through being shy, introverted, and generally unhappy. To this day I cannot listen to 80's music in a good mood. I had no confidence, and lived under the thumb of over-protective, strict Cuban parents. I am not sure when it started, where my personality reached out to these heroes of old, but it did. What I do remember is reading in 8th grade (yes, middle school) the beast called The Once and Future King. Most kids in my class simply called it "The 624 page monster." With the same fear I started it, not sure what or who I would find.

Therein I found a world filled with honor-bound knights fulfilling quests and dwelling in the mists of forests waiting for the dragon, the grail, or the maiden. I admired them, and looked around my world for a round table. I found none. Perhaps that is where my rejection of reality first started. I despised the world for being so lifeless, so colorless, so technologically and mythologically bland. A barrage of fantasy books filled the void. Paramount among them The Dragonlance Chronicles (to this day volume two Dragons of Winter Night is the only book I read IN a movie theater) which was published by the sages who had created the Koran of rules by which our gang of social misfits lived by- Advanced Dungeon's and Dragons role playing game. Within that trilogy and those rule books dwelled a land which I considered to hold my true citizenship- regardless of being born in Newark, New Jersey.

The Spell

Bustling through the night with such heavy eyes, trying to figure all this blogging and doing. This site is quite simple and I would like to get the borders out of the way. Damn woman cut me off this morning and it enfuriated me. Woman from Alaska, living in a world that probably has only five or six cars, and that is during rush hour. Thinking about really changing this site if I could only stick to it.

All this happening in the middle of the night, as the summer drips from the
hourglass- too rapidly.

Pohl's Gateway

Found this book to be amazing, with a dreaded hangover, I sat on my couch perfectly intent to grow roots. A student lent me this book and I just let it go on the side for so very long. Other books kept grabbing my attention, not to mention the unbelievable amounts of summer reading I had to do (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, ugh, I call it quite simply the philiosophy machine).

I tore this book apart. Ripped it to shreds and went from the couch to the porch to the bed, to the floorboards with its wonderful pages. I had to find out more about the Heechee. Pohl just knows exactly how to create suspense. He is a sci-fi Alfred Hitchcock.

The book is about the human race finding an alien way station filled to the brim with alien spacecraft. We humans wholeheartedly start using the ships, even though we cannot control them. Some ships will fly into suns, planets, or belts. Others will go to long dead colonies where the crew can make a killing on retrieving profitable alien technology. But the risks far outwiegh the pay-off- maybe.

The very idea that the human race would simply grab an alien technology, start using it, disregarding the consequences- is not only shocking but damn plausible. If someone were to make money there would be no hesitation.

The minute I finished this one, I got online to my library and ordered the next one "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon". Must read inn a must read series

New Computer

With my friend at my side discovered the new and interesting internet. Could not believe something called "Google Earth"- remarkable. I cannot decide if it scares me or elates me quite frankly. But I will try to post more on this, until it is discovered by unwanted elements.