The Young Sopranos

  AMISH BABY ESTHER A CHANCE ENCOUNTER I went to the grocery store and when I was waiting in check out there was this little amish baby looking at me. Usually children like me or hate me with my full beard. But Amish children all ages stare at me/my big gray beard trying to figure out whats wrong with me? (I have long hair & a mustache--Amish bearded men don't) But this little baby girl was the youngest child that ever noticed me. She didnt smile or cry. She just looked at me. I thought to myself this small innocent child has an entire life ahead of her. I can tell you I had promised these old ladies in my apartment building that I'd take them to get ice-cream some hot night I was feeling like Mr. Big Stuff that day which was short lived So I have felt bad for 3 weeks about it. Then last night I went to store but it was too busy by the looks of the crowded parking lot cars. So I went back this morning to buy each of the ladies a carton of different ice creams to s...

  UNDERSTANDING BUTOH "BECOMING OTHER'"--(SERIES) THE WHITE WHALE WRITTEN BY ARA FIG MMXXVI --- The surf does not break against the rocks; it grinds them, chewing basalt into grey slurry with the patience of molars that have chewed for centuries. Where the shore surrenders to the swell, the body stops being human and becomes a sponge of salt and terror. White pigment streaks from face and chest in milky rivulets, like lime leaking from a sinking hull.   Hair matted into ropes clings to the neck like dying kelp, dripping brine that mixes indistinguishably with grief too old for language. The flesh, heavy under a translucent, sodden robe, gives itself to the ocean's pull. Each breath draws down the iodine weight of the abyss, and the lungs fill not with air but with pressure.  Salt spray pools in the cleavage like stagnant tarns on an eroding cliff. The water decides every tremor now. Beside her the white whale surfaces — a pale dome scarred and barnacled by leagues ...

   UNDERSTANDING BUTOH "BECOMING OTHER" (SERIES) "ABANDONED HOT SPRINGS BATHHOUSE" WRITTEN BY ARA FIG MMXXVI  UNDERSTANDING BUTOH--BECOMING OTHER: ABANDONED HOT SPRINGS BATHHOUSE The floor of the abandoned bathhouse does not merely hold weight; it drinks the centuries of mineral deposits, sulfur veins, and stagnant water that once rose in scalding plumes from the earth. Layer upon layer of calcified residue has fused with the cracked tiles, turning the surface into a porous membrane of forgotten thermal springs.  Standing motionless in this damp rot, the body ceases to be a discrete organism and becomes its own weather system—an internal climate of pressure fronts, cold fronts, and slow evaporations. The white paint across the skin, once a deliberate mask, now cracks under the relentless humidity, flaking in thin, irregular sheets like lime washed from decaying masonry walls. Each flake detaches with the quiet persistence of geological time, revealing the underlying...