Creative

Sunday Matinee – Double Down (Part 2)

May 30, 2010

A Film Noir by A. Jay Adler DOUBLE DOWN Part Two The Story So Far Part I: Jack Miles, rock n’ roll roadie, has returned home looking for a job. He meets old friends and begins new love. Her name is Sonny. She’s a detective. Jack’s estranged identical twin is about to be rich. Now, [...]

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Sunday Matinee – Double Down (Part 1)

May 23, 2010

A Film Noir by A. Jay Adler DOUBLE DOWN Part One (In which a rock & roll roadie comes home. He meets old friends and encounters a detective. She is beautiful. She tells him to spread ‘em.) EXT. A Dry Valley – DAY/Night A panoramic view of Caifornia’s Central Valley. Bright, washed out sunlight. Slowly, [...]

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The God Particle

May 20, 2010

Once upon a time in an intellectual land far, far away, philosophy concerned itself, among other matters, with questions such as the nature of meaning in life, how to live in the absence or presence of God, and why there is something rather than nothing. A great existential cartoon, which still hung on a bulletin [...]

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The Dark Backward

April 16, 2010

What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? If thou remember’st aught ere thou camest here, How thou camest here thou mayst. Prospero, Act 1, Scene 1, The Tempest Over the past week, the general media have begun to report – Sixty Minutes this past Sunday, The New York Times last [...]

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New Work: “Bordello Rooms”

January 6, 2010

“Bordello Rooms” at The Writer’s Eye Magazine, creative non-fiction by Jay with photography by Julia. So I have all the elements. It isn’t hard. To see the crowded room. The cards. The dice. The theatrics on stage; the drama on the floor. Shots being poured. The shot ringing out. A shout. The general honky-tonk and [...]

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Guest Post at Normblog

December 15, 2009

Today I have a guest post at Normblog:  a contribution to the long-running Writer’s Choice series for which the contributor discusses a book that has been important to him. My post is on Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. The semi-eponymous Normblog is the blog of Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus of Government at the University [...]

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New Work

November 11, 2009

BloodLotus Issue 14 October 2009 ————————————————————————————————— Global Viewpoints Indigenous Peoples My poem “Myth” appears in the latest issue of BloodLotus, just hitting the screenstands. “Aboriginal Sin,” which originally appeared in Tikkun, is now reprinted in Global Viewpoints: Indigenous Peoples. The textbook anthologizes significant works and statements on the situation of indigenous peoples around the world, [...]

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Penelope

October 18, 2009

Penelope came with a house. We were renting from a friend and part of the deal was that if the friend rented to us, we had to take her dog. We already had Homer, a big lug of a part-Shepherd mutt, smart because obediently eager to please, but otherwise a very dopey beta. I didn’t [...]

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Blink, part IV

August 5, 2009

Blink I: In My Bedroom ….. Blink II: In Far Rockaway ….. Blink III: In the World IV. In My Mind To be alive and human is to be shadowed by death. “They give birth astride of a grave,” says Becket’s Ponzo in Waiting for Godot, “the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once [...]

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Blink, part III

March 9, 2009

In the World It would be an obvious conclusion to draw that I was now finished with both Kenny and Robert as friends, but that would be only half true. It might, as well, more tightly shape my theme to be done with Robert here, but that also would be only half true. Robert talked [...]

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Blink, part II

February 15, 2009

In Far Rockaway Shortly before my tenth birthday, we moved from Bell Park Manor-Terrace and that childhood bedroom to an apartment building on Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway, also in Queens. Far Rockaway was a tougher and more heterogeneous neighborhood than the predominately white and Jewish Queens Village, and I was confronted with some [...]

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Blink

February 4, 2009

In My Bedroom One of my early childhood memories – I might have been four or six or eight, I don’t know, but certainly no older than eight; I think younger – is of lying in bed, alone in the dark, thinking about death. (I was a scream at the birthday parties.) I say alone [...]

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Ocean Poem II

January 13, 2009

The Shores of the World Where the seam of the sky and the open sea meet the mind’s long gaze, and the tide tugs all along the earth’s vast sands – the edge of the world held out into space like a gift on a palm – the weight of the infinite day rests on [...]

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Ocean Poem

December 24, 2008

Ocean’s End Along the coastal Atlantic at summer’s end the Caribbean’s hurricane mood looms over the waters north to New York, the Cape and beyond. The season’s swells deliver you from the human traffic toward the sun while the locals remain to neighbor their brooding god. In fishing villages, the perennial change in weather forces [...]

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Bordello Rooms

December 10, 2008

The way I do it is I stand in the middle. I’m in the desert this time, gazing at the landscape as the dogs chase rabbits and roadrunners around me. My back is turned to Highway 80, to RVs and the other signs of post-nineteenth-century life, though they aren’t that plentiful. Before me, almost all [...]

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The World Again

December 9, 2008

darkness come to light Bright son sitting in a pool, calm, ripple, feel Grass around Pain of becoming Oh Tall faces against the wide sky so Hold me Hear me not Cry in silence Where I come from In this utter presence From this merely mine With these great and meager presents Shine AJA Los [...]

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