The Place Which Never Existed

/

…enormous, at least two-metre thick, concrete double door slides open, and a dark and cool throat of the mountain is almost sucking me in. My jaw has dropped. No…I’m not reading you an excerpt from some horror or thriller novel, and my name is not James Bond.

I’m standing on the doorstep of the once top-secret facility on the Black Sea coast and now the Naval Museum Complex Balaklava on the south-east of Crimean peninsula, just a stone-throw away from the city of…

By L. Salt

Read More

Honoring the Long Road to Success

/

The road to success is long. Is it fraught with setbacks and failures. When we honor this process we will be better able to get back in the game. We can start over any time we choose.

————

…is a part of my mind that tells me that I should be able to achieve great results just by some sheer act of will power on my part. This idea of getting into the trenches and doing…


By John C. Davis

Read More

Becoming Italian

/

Urge to Rome

————

…stood in the kitchen with the five other mothers of the settima classe—the seventh grade. Curious to visit an Italian home since our arrival in Rome, here I finally was, one of le ragazze, the girls. There was nothing exotic about the room: modern counters, appliances, wall phone with an extra-long cord. A window looked onto a back yard where a yapping collie blend wrestled with a pink rubber ball. I could have been in New York. Ohio. Anywhere in America. Only the clouds of cigarette smoke, the undecipherable staccato banter and the Moka pot on…


By Kyra Robinov

Read More

Stay the Course; Keep Doing your Art

/

It can be challenging in today's busy world to stay focused. Keep doing your art regardless of how challenging it is.

————

…many of us can relate to being distracted? How can we not? Every five seconds there is another notification on our smart phones. And, life just being what it is will always be presenting us with another situation to deal with. It's…


By John C. Davis

Read More

Forgiveness Leads to Healing

/

Regretting our past leads to frustration. When we can forgive ourselves for our past behavior, we will begin to heal. We were doing the best we could in the moment. It is time for us to heal.

————

…is my birthday. It's not a milestone birthday, but it still counts. As for all of us, birthdays present an opportunity to look at our lives, and see how we are doing. It also provides an opportunity for healing.

 Yes, the birthday is just another day. Nothing really happens differently on my birthday than it does on any other day. I wake up…


By John Davis

Read More

Binders

/

Sometimes looking back to the past can give you insights into the present.

————

…time of year always seems to turn me inward. The gray skies, cooler temperatures, and often-inclement weather feed my need to hibernate, and the warmth and coziness I find indoors lend itself to sitting with my mind and turning its eye to the past.

Earlier this year, I made the difficult decision to end a career that had seen me through nine years of momentous life changes. It was a career I loved but I was no longer in love with it. It was a career that…


By Kate Williams

Read More

“To My Dear and Loving Husband”: Perspective, Tone, and Effect in Anne Bradstreet's Poem

/

A brief, critical essay on a timeless, classic poem of New World, English verse.

————

…Bradstreet's poem is decidedly elegant and sublimely beautiful because of its subject, perspective, and tone. The subject is about love; the perspective is that of a wife to her husband; and the tone is one of eternal love and steadfastly-affectionate devotion (to the spouse).

Anne Bradstreet's elegantly-expressed love for her husband is admirable, heartwarming, and inspiring. The poem itself inspires one to be a similar kind of spouse for one's wife. But, in a more fundamental way, the poem moves one to be a similar kind of man for any woman in his life with whom he has a relationship…

By Ngoc Nguyen

Read More

Remembering Robin Williams: Oh Captain! MyCaptain!

/

Remembering and reflection.

————

…off, let's know just a smidge about how this amazing man came to be.

Robin McLaurin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His mother, Laura McLaurin was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams's ancestry included English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, German, and French.

He was raised in the Episcopal Church (while his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills…

By RayFed

Read More

Horror Lore & Survival Guide

/

In case your damned soul ever finds itself in the mouth of darkness…

————

…Oxford Dictionary defines the concept as “An intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust”. In the field of narrative fiction, it’s the genre whose main goal is to incite feelings related to dread, deeply related to the anticipating feeling before a fearful experience, also known as Terror. In spite of how many basic definitions had been given to the notion, every sentient being in the universe(s) can concede that horror, in all his forms and types, involves the action of generating fear on any living…

By RC Lanzmann

Read More

On Time

/

…is indefinite, a sequence of continuous events from the past, within the present, and of the future to come.

Society has become fixated with the measurement and the scheduling of time, instead of directing their attention and energy to the sequence of events that are, in essence, their livelihood.

How wonderful life would be if we concentrated on the events that need to occur, rather that the twirly cogs in the machine; to measure our…

By Tracey Koehler

Read More