On Being a Collector of Books (a short story)

Odysseus: Homer vs. Hollywood (a short story)

"Hello, students. Hope you had a crappy weekend. How many of you went to the theater to watch Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey?" Three hands shot up. One very excitedly. "Yes, Jeremy. What did you think of it?" Jeremy was a polarizing figure in the class. Intelligent? Yes. Disruptive? Yes. Rude and obnoxious? Yes and yes, almost always. But Mr. Grey liked him anyway because he was always there and usually willing to contribute to the discourse. "Bro, Mr. Grey, this movie was slinging. I've seen Troy with Brad Pitt. This ain't Troy. I liked it." "Thanks, Jeremy. What was it about, at its core? No spoilers, but give me some context here." "It's Odysseus, played skillfully by Matt Damon, journeying home after war, and the people waiting for him." "Thank you, Jeremy. And if you don't mind, I'm going to keep you on the spot for the rest of class. We're going to dissect what this story means and the greater context of one of the greatest works of literature in the history of the world." "Okay, now a quick lecture about what The Odyssey is. Don't get lost here, and don't fall asleep. I'll keep it short." "The Odyssey is a Greek epic poem. It was composed sometime around the 700s B.C., but it wasn't originally written down. It was part of an oral tradition, passed down and recited by bards over the centuries. The story was eventually written down, and later manuscripts preserved it for future generations." A hand from the corner shot up. "Yes, Julie?" "What's a bard?" "It's a poet, artist, or singer." "Thanks." "No problem." "And by the time The Odyssey was composed, it is almost certain that the poet had before him a well-arranged mass of legends and traditions from which he could select his material. And as Jeremy said, this recent Christopher Nolan film has re-sparked interest in the tale." "Odysseus was the king of Ithaca, a small and rugged island off the western coast of Greece. Soon after he married and had his only son, Telemachus, the Trojan War began." "The poets tell us the purpose of the war was to recover Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Odysseus had no interest in Helen himself. He was already married to Penelope. But years earlier he had sworn an oath to defend Helen's future husband if the need ever arose, and when Troy refused to return her, he was bound to keep his word."

Making my High School C Team

I am fifteen years old, and I can only tell what I see, what I hear, and what I think is going on. If you want the whole story, you'd have to ask my dad, my coach, the other parents, and probably a few of my teammates. They might all tell it differently then I do. There are a little more than three minutes left before halftime, and we're losing by ten points. It's to a smaller school. Not a terrible school or anything, but a school we should be beating. We have more athletes than they do. At least that's what everybody said before the game. I'm sitting on the end of the bench. It isn't really the end. There are two guys sitting farther down than me, but they are on the JV team, even though they are in my grade. They are just here to watch. I look across the gym and see my dad.

The Left Side of the Bench (A Short Story)

Part One - Left Side of the Bench In the coastal town of Lincoln City, a horticulture engineer with a unique perspective on life finds unexpected connection with a mysterious, but familiar stranger. Excerpt: "Oh hey, how are you?" I responded. It was the girl. She was beautiful. I adjusted my headslightly to make eye contact with my good eye. "I think I know you," she said. The analytical mind of an engineer quickly deduced that thisgirl, whom I slightly recognized, but possibly never met, had left her group of friends and returned to me. There had to be a motivation.  "Stop overthinking," I scolded myself."Say something, you damned idiot. She asked you a question, and you're sitting here speechless."  "You know, you seem awfully familiar too. We must haveknown each other at some point in our lives. When do you think it was?" I replied with a question.  I ease into a sense of relief. This girl is way out of myleague, both in looks and style. The truth is, I don't stand a chance. Thank you, God. Now, I can just relax, be her friend for just a moment, and not worry about the complexities of romance. There's something about our human nature always pushing for romantic relationships, which ironically can work against them, especially when pushed too early.  Lately, I've found a certain contentment with the idea ofbeing a single man—not a bachelor or a party animal, just a human living solo. There's a wonderfully relaxing aspect to it that I've come to appreciate.   "Quit overthinking, you fool. You've only exchangedone sentence with this girl, and you're already reconsidering your entire future." I thought to myself, still waiting on her response.

The Beardless Jesus Postscript: The Face in Iznik

An archaeological team in Turkey had recently uncovered an ancient image beneath layers of plaster inside a church near Iznik. This image of Christ, portrayed as the Good Shepherd, was among the five oldest surviving depictions of Jesus as an adult ever found anywhere in the world. It dated from the early-to-mid third century AD and was the best-preserved early image of Jesus ever discovered. Because it had been sealed inside an exceptionally well-preserved, oxygen-depleted underground chamber, the fresco’s pigments remained almost exactly as they had been painted some eighteen hundred years earlier. The image was so complete that Christ’s facial features, the individual folds of his tunic, his hands, and the distinct outline of the ram across his shoulders remained clearly visible and sharp. The newly discovered painting gave historians a remarkably detailed glimpse into how some early Christians perceived Jesus. Short-cropped hair. Middle-class Roman clothing. And beardless. Professor Buck zoomed in on the fresco, this work that seemed to solidify a lifelong thesis. He smiled to himself. And that felt like enough.

Writing a Book in My Spare Time (a short story)

Excerpt: "My dreams however, kept me awake—Claire, William, the breakfast at the Caffè Florian. The conflict. She was nervous, but not refined, and not always on edge, just this morning. The man, the nameless man, or William now, but that doesn’t fit. That’s ok, we will use it anyway. William and Claire at the Caffe. And there was a child, there were children, but this child, their last to leave them, and now they were alone on this trip, alone on a trip for the first time in their lives, really. They had taken trips, vacations, second honeymoons, but there were always children at home, demands to come back to and to worry about. But is that a plot? Who are the characters? Dream on, brain and soul, find me answers, give me questions to ask. I know the story, it’s the details that I don’t know. The story is already in me. But can the story survive one setting? There is another man. He enters the picture soon, as the reader will see. A tall man, slender with a beer belly. A man in his 20s, the reader may presume, or pushing 30. A gentle man, but boy can he drink. And boy can he eat. He joins William and Claire for breakfast and orders immediately. A large bowl of clam chowder, an extra roll or two for the dipping, and a glass of Aperol spritz. That is all for the night."