Authors Electric

The other night I found myself in a crush of shoppers at a big-top market. Its cavernous space cheerfully illuminated: Murmurs blended into the ambient up-music amid a kaleidoscope of kiosks, redolent with e xotic victuals. I was bringing an order of barbecued prawns to my inamorata and a couple of friends who sat at a food court table chatting merrily. As I approached, someone informed me that I had dropped something. Shrimp were falling from the soggy bottom of my bag, one-by-one, leaving a trail behind me. Then the bag gave way and the rest plopped to the tiled floor in a slippery mess at my feet. There was a hush. People tried not to stare. No use attempting to salvage anything. I could just hear, “Clean-up on aisle 4,” over the loudspeakers. “ Tooozi again! Get that Toozi off the court!” I remembered my red-faced high school basketball coach blowing his whistle and yanking me out of practice games for passing the ball to opposing players. I grinned fe...

Orson Welles ' "Lady from Shanghai" Mirror Maze Scene My cursor blinks accusingly from the end of a pathetic little string of words, lost in the white-out of a freshly opened page – a tiny Inuit and his dog team sledding over the ice pack of my frozen inspiration. Time to take a walk, maybe down to the lake. Let the creative unconscious (that capricious weasel) to its job. Maybe I should get that pound of coffee we need, or change that burned-out track light in the hallway. But how can I take a break when I haven't even started? … Mmmm. What's in the refrigerator, and why am I staring into it? How did I get here? Indeed, that is the question. Back at my desk amid its comfortable clutter, I swivel in my high-backed chair to see Oliver, my inamorata's fat orange cat, sprawled on a window sill facing our pair of leafy verdant mulberry trees. A deliriously bright summer afternoon – breezy and pungent from yesterday's thunderstorms – beckons me. Olive...