I hope for the best, and applaud the people working on the relief rigs, who I view as heroes in an episode largely dominated by ugly and useless characters.

One does not beat an addiction by finding a closer, friendlier, more reasonable dealer.

The whole thing happened in less than 3 seconds. Sprawled in the road, limp, tongue hanging out, the scent of chewed rosemary and goat piss heavy in the air; Travis had clearly checked out, and his return was seriously in question. Now I found myself standing over the prize component of someone's livelihood, prodding its filthy corpse frantically, my pulse soaring as I searched vainly for any hint of his.

I never thought of myself as a passionate proponent of anything. I'm hopelessly cynical, I lack direction, and I have a hard time seeing humanity as something more than a narcissistic anomaly occupying a speck of matter in the universe which delights in trivialities and increasingly viral behavior. I have a shadowy sense of humor and a hard time trusting others. My politics are cryptic and subject to interpretation. I'm not exactly the archetypal Peace Corps Volunteer.

Is it strange to draw strength from futility and despair? Is it possible to find joy in suffering, and power in frustration? What about comfort in filth, satisfaction in being hungry, or sublime order in absolute chaos? Last year around this time these dynamics were in full swing and keeping me moving. In Jamaica, I regularly [...]

Your day starts just before sunrise with the ghastly cries of God's most despicable creation: the rooster. If there was an animal could make a compelling case for its own extinction, it would be the rooster. Little more than a strutting sac of chicken sperm, this bird is the pinnacle of utter uselessness, irritation, and fail.

No one in town knows how old he is or where he came from. One is led to believe that he simply grew up from the fiery soil like the knarled mango trees guarding the main road. For most, he is just another permanent fixture of daily life. There’s the mountain… the gully… the river… the sun… and Lion. Much like the sun, folks measure time according to his movements.

The first sting is undoubtedly the worst; a screaming fire spreading under your skin, multiplied immediately as the dying bee releases pheromones signaling her comrades to join in the instinctual suicide that has protected countless hives for millions of years. Two more infernos begin blazing across your bare hand and you are gripped by the natural urge to freak out and exercise the vilest vocabulary at your disposal. You want to run, to scratch, to pull the pulsating stingers from your flesh and curse yourself for being so brutally stupid as to voluntarily inflict this pain upon yourself simply because you wanted to learn about beekeeping.

Karesansui is the 500-year-old landscape artform in which the eternal is represented by a group of rocks surrounded by carefully raked sand. The literal translation of the Japanese word is “Dry-Mountain-Water,” and it’s an infinitely more elegant concept than the label which we barbarians have bestowed upon it: the Zen Garden. Karesansui was developed by Buddhist monks [...]

The country could not support its population through local food production, and a series of dysfunctional governments controlled the food aid for much of the population, which continued to grow despite the ghastly infant mortality rate and an ever-decreasing average lifespan. Environmental degradation and overpopulation get little airtime, but from every way I can tell they are probably the most realistic threats to the survival of our species. Haiti is a microcosm of the planet, and anything that happens there could, given enough time, people, and pressure, occur anywhere.

You get one of those wonderful shocks, the kind where you feel your heart scream and your muscles jerk, your pupils contract as the cold purges the smoldering pain and discomfort that was consuming you seconds before.

With the wind comes the rain, and with the rain come the snails. The season starts up in late July, its breezes pushing lacy blankets of cloud over the island for a couple weeks, providing a glorious time when the angry heat is purged from the land and the true tropical paradise before me pulses and [...]

When we finally exit the forest and the road goes smooth, the driver stomps on the gas and the rugged little Toyota swerves to the edge of the road, scraping the wall of sugar cane and surging forward to overtake the lead car. His adversary, a fellow taxi driver sitting low in a nearly identical [...]

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Well, I’ve got to hand it to JPS, it seems they’re not the vanguards of suffering and hopelessness that my previous experiences with them have made me believe. I thought there was no way they’d have the power back up by the weekend, but the magnificent bastards have proven me wrong and I couldn’t be [...]

“You nuh tink a ram goat can talk like a man unda the fuol moon?” It was then that I realized that Lion was dead serious. His normally-hazy eyes were clear, searching mine with an unsettling intensity. We sat around the domino table amidst of hundreds of mourners, the solitary fluorescent bulb above us attracting a [...]

This was my backyard since I moved here in January. Swanky, eh? All was cool until sometime last Thursday when someone had to go and die. It wasn’t long until I awoke one morning to the happy sounds of rusty shovels scraping cement outside my window. Armed with a cup of instant coffee and [...]

We are different, you and I. Despite all the grand proclamations of brotherhood and equality, the praises and chants for One-World-Harmony, and every lofty quote ever uttered by any of history’s exalted luminaries; our minds will always follow differing paths. Though our bodies consist of identical components and are subject to the same pleasures and pains [...]

Once there was a boy who spent much of his boyhood searching for the meaning of his own existence, for some kind of proof that his meager life mattered at all. As this was not the typical thought pattern of other boys his age, this boy’s subconscious had been paddled across time by external forces [...]

A few weeks ago I received a cryptic missive from HQ describing an American expedition to the mythical Shaare Shalom Synagogue in Kingston. Legend has it that one of the New World’s oldest synagogues was sitting a couple blocks west of Allman Town, just above Parade in the heart of downtown. Apparently, Sephardic Jews have [...]

For centuries, the British have been engaged in an intricate network of international exchange that spans all corners of our spherical planet. Upon colonizing a new land, they would promptly develop a special trade relationship with its inhabitants in the customary European fashion; giving them smallpox, Christianity, and plenty of rewarding forced labor in [...]

It has come to my attention that I need to speak of Jacksonville at least one time before I die. I say that simply because my life expectancy has slipped into frame with my current lifestyle and with the environment in which I dwell. I am as safe here as Jamaica lets me be, [...]

It’s fun to be young and pessimistic, defying authority and praying for the collapse of the social order. Latching on to a pseudo-anarchic philosophy, you take as your hero some fictional badass like Tyler Durden and do your best to garner whatever scraps of attention that society tosses your way. The awkward pain of growing [...]