Category: Memoir
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The Mission District, Google, and My Pissed-Off Salvadoran Blood
Sometimes I visit the Mission District of San Francisco, where I was born. It’s not the same, and it’s getting worse. Google moved into the neighborhood. On the east side of Valencia Street, it’s still Latino. I walk by and smell the tacos and pupusas, and hear Spanish conversations in the lilts of Mexico, El […]
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Writing Against the Taboos
I’m supposed to stay away from the taboos. This is both what my doctor and Michelle recommend. This is a time of rest, they say. They remind me that the tender weeks after a mental collapse need to be calm, with near-zero stress. I don’t disagree. Asylum means sanctuary, refuge, protection. True asylum is a […]
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My Demons Scream For Nutella
I got a little too close to the core yesterday, when I wrote here on The Writing Bull. The image of the little nude boy in a tight cage did it. I know I got too close, because I went on a mini-binge. Suddenly, my body craved, not carrots or apples, but peanut butter, which […]
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Professor Dick Head
Professor Dick Head (his friends called him Richard) taught a literature class in my undergraduate college. He was a really smart guy. He had the air of New England about him, though I think he was from Illinois. He wore a tweed coat and vest, dark ties, horn rimmed glasses, a goatee and self-righteousness. He […]
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Careful, who you read your journal to…
In the middle of writing the first notes for the novel The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, I recorded the above dream. My son Ben had been born two months previous. He was our last of four children, and my mind had focused on that—the youngest. There was a brittle feeling about it, though […]