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Seeds
This was a failed entry for a Blizzard writing contest. I still kind of like it though, so here it is. On the short end of their length requirement. Anduin Wrynn’s breath steamed from cold and exertion as he crested the steep road climbing from the valleys of Dun Morogh to Ironforge. The pair of adventurers he had…
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Diablo: Lord of Terribad
Diablo II is the first videogame I remember developing an obsession with. I played every character class through to the endgame (except for the necromancer: in minion-on-minion action at the beginning of Act IV even my most powerful golem crumpled like paper before Hell’s candy-aura-fisted skeletons and left me reduced to a puddle of goo…
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Snow White and the Buddha
So I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman last weekend despite its 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the frequently scathing reviews. Actually I went to see it partly because of the scathing reviews. (And because in the trailer menacing soldiers burst into showers of black shards when struck with swords. That seemed worth watching on a large screen.)…
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State of Grace
I. The Burial of the Dead Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers. When we pull up in front of my parents’ house I notice the trees first. The almond whose slender shimmering leaves splashed my bedroom walls with pale green light as I studied Eliot, then Heidegger,…
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Woods Woman, Part II
“Snow White.” The syllables spun forth from the king’s lips and onto her shoulders like an unwanted mantle as he stepped from his sleigh. Well, she wouldn’t have to wear it long. Regicide was a capital crime in the realm; if she were taken she could expect little more of her brief free life than…
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Woods Woman, Part I
The woods woman hated winter. Game was scarce and shy. Chill winds skittered beneath the door and seeped between the windowpanes. And though she cherished her solitude, weeks cooped up in a tiny cottage as blizzard after blizzard howled outside could drive anyone a little around the bend. There was another reason she despised the…
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Reflections, Part III
The morning after his courting of Sylvie, Kleitos Leonidas rose before dawn began to pink the eastern sky, turned off the lights she habitually left blazing all night to annoy her neighbors and threaded his way through the oaks to the lake’s edge. The moon had gone down some hours before and had anyone been…
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Monastic Meditations
The New Camaldoli hermitage perches atop a mountain just south of Big Sur. The dozen or so Benedictine monastics who call the hermitage home earn a portion of their living from fruit and date nut cakes and a small bookstore and gift shop. But their primary source of income is a retreat house and guest…
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Wild Hunt, Part III
The brindle had been living alone with the Adam-children for six months when the fox hunters came. The Odin-daughter had passed on five seasons before and the Odin-son, lasting far longer than Cu Fail prophesied, three full seasons after that. He had warned the brindle of the Wild Hunt’s coming, but she had seen no…
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Epistemological Exercise
A branch of philosophy that investigates the methods, limits, and origin of human knowledge. A visual document of a moment in time: a cloudy eighth of May at approximately nine a.m. in Sand City, California when a singular number of crab husks littered the beach. What can be said about it? * * * These…
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