March 6, 2026
I feel as if I have two personalities, one which speaks English and one which speaks Japanese. The one which speaks English can never get past being a high school geek. The one which speaks Japanese cannot get past being a “strange foreigner.” The only time I feel comfortable now is when I am teaching. Only there can I be an actor and change who I am any time I want.
February 4, 2024
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
I would say “yes.”
How?
Failure influences my perspective on life.
Successes influence my perspective on life.
Deaths influence my perspective on life.
Births influence my perspective on life.
Travel influences my perspective on life.
I would list the above five as “significant events” in life. But “the passage of time” is a little more vague.
Four years doesn’t seem like a long time to me now, but it sure did when I was 18.
Even six years doesn’t seem all that long now. But to my daughter who graduates from elementary school this March, six years is half her life.
My perspective on this question is that it’s the people in my life that have changed my perspective.
Even my daughter gets this. She wants to visit Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the US again because, as she put it, “a little piece of me is still there.”
But that’s just her perspective. Or is it?
January 20, 2024
That’s what we are, really; a constant turmoil between past and future, the mixing point of who we once were and who we are afraid we may become. We are constantly becoming — yet we never lose sight of the past, or if we do, we do so deliberately…but our past lies in wait, crouches and hides unbidden, always ready to pounce out from the mind’s darkness to set itself against future hopes and desires. Our previous selves eternally war with our future selves; it is the center of this conflict where we exist, and it is because of this inner turmoil we stay alive.
September 15, 2023
A story must be more than merely a story. It must be an examination, of the human heart, of the mind, of the spirit. Of experience and existence. A simple recapitulation of one’s personal past or the delusional suffering of a dysfunctional suburban American family have no merit. Overcoming the reality we believe we live in, debunking fiction and elevating the truth, that is worthwhile.
December 5, 2022
Just saw someone on my morning commuter train wearing a fluffy beige coat with a single word in all capital letters, stretching across the back from left elbow to right elbow:
EXPLOIT
Yeah. That’s what happened, alright.
November 20, 2018
Just gonna post this here for posterity…
February 11, 2018
So much for my New Year’s resolution of writing more regularly on my blog.
I can blame “writer’s block,” which is sometimes just a convenient excuse for general laziness and sometimes stems from a genuine fear of being entirely uncreative and uninnovative.
(My software program tells me that uninnovative is not a real word. Well, now it is. So there.) Continue Reading
March 29, 2016
I’ve been meaning to add a personal essay page to my web site for stories that didn’t seem to fit into any neat categories. The immediate impetus is an essay that was recently “rejected” by my former graduate program’s in-house literary journal…probably because it’s an essay and not a short story (I posted elsewhere an article about the quirkiness of the English-speaking world’s insistence on an artificial separation of “fiction” and “nonfiction”).
Rather than wait up to half a year to see whether I could get it published online in a magazine (most of which seem to only publish US-centric, “woe is me” or “OMG look at THIS” sensationalist drivel) I thought that at least I could share it here…
The essay is “En” (縁), a topic that Asians (particularly those in Confucian-influenced societies) know a lot about. I first encountered the concept as a teaching assistant in Gojo High School, Nara, about 15 years ago. Almost like a previous life. Maybe it was…
Check it out here.
March 21, 2016
This is the fourth preview of my upcoming collection of short stories and poems, Notes from the Nineties. In the first part, I explained the background behind the first story and poem pair, Cois Fharriage and Ag an gCrosaire. In the second part, I took a look at some of my experiences in Japan that informed Asian Dreams and Training the Mountain Warrior. In the third part, I delved into the “true story” of The Lost Bunny Shrine of Annandale.
Today marks the first day of spring, as well as the start of the Easter Week. And while it is the end of Spring Break for some schools in North America, it’s still spring break for others…and it was, in fact, around this time of year back in 1996 that the seeds of “The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha” were planted. Like teeth.
That remark alone should let you know that this is not a typical story (if the title hadn’t already tipped you off by now). Continue Reading
February 5, 2016
Time for a book release party…
I’m putting the finishing touches on an anthology of short stories and poems, some of which date alllll the way back to 1992. Pre-SNS. Pre-email, even. Scary stuff.
A few come from my undergraduate Senior Project. A couple from my MFA thesis (the main part of which became Approaching Twi-Night). Another handful were used to apply to said MFA program. Aside from two that were published in university literary journals, the poems have basically never seen the light of day. A couple of the stories did appear in previous versions elsewhere.
The stories are meant to provoke, to inspire, to draw a contrast between aspects of life in Upstate, out of state, and overseas, to see the world through different eyes…to challenge perceptions. And naturally, to make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. Readers should find something to interest them, no matter their reading preference. That, in my humble opinion, is one of the biggest benefits of daring varying writing styles.
This space will be updated from now until the book release with notes on the stories — some shorter, some longer — but the poems I leave to the reader’s interpretation.
Hope you look forward to it!
Click here or on the tab above for the Notes from the Nineties page.
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