“Angled rock faces formed immense rusty nuggets. Low, shallow formations could have been Aztec pyramids. A Parthenon in red ochre stretched far across a mini-plateau. Talus-skirting fringed great tables of sandstone. A sphinx figure towered over what looked like an ancient city’s battlemented walls. One of the most unusual carvings showed a Chinese warrior with […]
Continue reading“People like Isabella, Melvin, Soyala, and Skylar had been invited to the Prince’s ball all right, but as wallflowers, strays, and stags. The newcomers, like adjunct lecturers alive with dazzle and flair, had a real but short-lived effect on the University. The interlopers appeared on campus like vibrant and unusual posters for a theatre production: […]
Continue reading“The United States had supposedly turned its back on the old-country ways of class stratification in favor of equality; hence, it could never, in good conscience, acknowledge any system in the country that smacked of aristocratic privilege. So the wealthy gave lip service to upward mobility and told stories of walking ten miles in the […]
Continue reading“On Christmas Eve, they took both cars to St. Dunstan’s for the candlelight ceremony that in the latter years had survived, with Easter, as the only occasions when any of the family attended church. Heavy snow fell as they drove, transforming the earth and its accretions in the celestial fashion that it often does. For […]
Continue reading“But the finest visual treats were those furthest removed from the travelers’ point of vantage. In the distance, shimmering in that soft, other-worldly light which dusk sometimes brings, gleaming in palest silver and chastened white, loomed a vast temple structure part celestial and part chthonic: a building of rock reminiscent of Karnak, Angkor Wat, or […]
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