Sura 2:223 says that ‘your wife is as your farm to you, so treat her as you would your farm.’ The ulema have quoted this as if it meant you could treat women like the dirt under your feet, but these c...
Strange to consider that these two linguistic operations, metaphor and analogy, so often linked together in rhetoric and narratology, and considered to be variants of the same operation, are actually...
Some people get lucky and partner up with someone the same age, they know the same songs, have the same references and all that, good for them! But for the rest of us it’s catch-as-catch-can.
Relationships were for that reason utterly mysterious, they took place between two subconscious minds, and whatever the surface trickle thought was going on could not be trusted to be right.
Ramona was willing to talk about anything, now, about things beyond the present moment. Childhoods in El Modena and at the beach. The boats offshore. Their work. The people they knew. The huge rocks j...
Perhaps there is a provisional solution to this epistemological mess, which is to be located in the phrase it is as if. This phrase is of course precisely the announcement of an analogy. And on reflec...
Oh God, Coyote said, and rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one hand. It's hard to remember something that long ago. It's almost like an epic poem I memorized once, and can barely recite an...
Of course we must do it! It is a matter of spirit! And that’s not to say it could have been done earlier, the infrastructure had to be installed, that’s always messy, but now we are ready for the art...
No one cares about books, that’s why you can write anything you want in them.
Make up a recipe for a successful revolution.Take large masses of injustice, resentment and frustration. Put them in a week or failing hegemon. Sir in misery for a generation or two, until the heat ri...
It was hard for her not to feel that a person loving her was making a big mistake. Because she knew herself better than they did, so knew their love was given in error.
It takes courage to keep love at the center when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of things! It’s easy to get angry, anyone can do that. It’s making good that’s the hard part, it’s...
In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing. You could put your bishop out there to mate the other guy’s king, and he could lean down and whisper in your bishop’s ear, and suddenly i...
I know. She sighed. We’ll all say that. We’ll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it’s all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone a...
I guess you’ll have to try to do something with F’s moon now. Presumably it’s dead. Or even try E. He looked up at it, big in the blue sky. Well, no. It’s too big. Too heavy. Two minutes later: Maybe...
I can paint that fucking cave.
Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it’s high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It’s safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.
He did not want to be struck by her again. Or worse, denied her company.
Every ideal and value seemed to melt under a drenching of money, the universal solvent. Money money money. The fake fungibility of money, the pretense that you could buy meaning, buy life.
Esmerine go out briefly to relieve herself, then return and pull off her shift again, her breasts silvery raindrops spilling down her ribs in the moonlight, over Bahram’s hands as he warmed them, in t...