writer, editor
I once asked my father, who was deaf, which faculty he would rather lose, and he said sight. Shocked by the notion of not seeing, I asked why. He said that not hearing is isolating, that he couldn't join in conversations, that he was left out. Maybe he didn't use the word isolating. About a… Continue reading Voices
Well, you wouldn't read it if I called it Resistance and the Industry Codes. First, the resistance. By this I don't mean anything worthwhile, like resisting oil pipelines or industrial water extraction. I am, or so I say, working on a difficult story, and I would do anything other than write it. The word for… Continue reading Resistance and the Bunny
You might be wondering about the cave that the Nassar family once made home. Let me explain. The underground dwelling is warm and dry in the rainy winter, and cool in the scorching summer. Caves are not unusual in this land of hills carved by dry winds. Unlike European caves, these caves don't drip moisture… Continue reading Caves
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity sits above the Bow River and the town of Banff. Started in the 1930s as a project to give people in the arts some paid work, it is now a lively institution that houses retreats, workshops, concerts, a library, theatres and art galleries. I am here for the… Continue reading Banff Centre
The summer in East Jerusalem is hot and dry. Windows left open, surfaces in the apartment are coated in dust. Yet as I slowly go about daily activities, I see these little beauties blooming. For me they are like bits of joy caught in one's peripheral vision. And just as I am illiterate in this… Continue reading Improbable
This Is Not an Ulpan, based in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, offers Hebrew and Arabic lessons of a different sort than I've experienced. The classroom lessons are thematic and sometimes take place as excursions -- you go to a cafe to speak the language of cafes. They are committed to engaging with our surroundings. For example,… Continue reading Hebrew Words for Gaza
An easy one. I’m giving you ten random titles chosen from various random generators about ye olde internet — pick one, let that be the title of your new story. Any genre will do, list at the bottom of the post. Length: ~1000 words Due by: Friday, March 2nd, 2018 Post at your online space, link…… Continue reading Story Fun from Terrible Minds
Sometimes when I look at the view from the various hilltops where I live, I feel disbelief. (Disbelief in the most religious city in the world!) How can this be the view when only weeks ago it was lush gardens, clean parks, red buses, brollies and rain? The most sunny day in London could… Continue reading Expat Mobile
How could I resist an exhibition called “In the Valley of David and Goliath”? The exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem displays artifacts excavated from 2007 to 2013 at a 3,000 year-old site today known as Khirbet Qeiyafa, in the Elah Valley. But maybe, just maybe, it was the city of Sha'arayim, mentioned… Continue reading Look at the King the King the King
First impression, as someone at the handle end of a taut dog leash: walls, fences, and broken glass. The beige stones of the low walls have holes in them, look old, but they still block us from that apparent field of wasteland, from the hidden courtyards, from everything except this glass strewn uneven sidewalk. Once… Continue reading Jerusalem
Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what’s weird, different, other, but to… Continue reading Spiders and Art
From England to Canada, from the land of brick and gardens to the land of concrete. A cheap hotel near the airport for one night shocks me back into Canadian life. Carpet on concrete floors -- that smell. Plastic cutlery at the breakfast buffet, styrofoam cups, plastic plates, plastic glasses in the room. Zap zap… Continue reading Plastic land
Seen from the bus (not today) on Kensington, a man in a cream kurta (long shirt) with matching cap, white embroidered, cradling in his arm a bundle, the white points of which must be sharp, as he twice tries to rest this end of the bundle in his palm then quickly shifts it up. A… Continue reading Featherlies
Did you ever wonder how the fairies and lovers could, semi-dressed, spend the night in a woods in the third week of June in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream? After three Mays in England, I can explain how June can be mid-summer. Of the four warm sunny days that occur each year, two fall before… Continue reading Midsummer
After sunset, wind rants along the street, kicking newspapers and plastic bags ahead of it, snapping branches down. Into the lamplight hurry suited young men clutching flowers to their chests. Outside a restaurant a man in a car hurls words at a delivery man standing on the sidewalk, "Move your fucking bike, man."
Tube strike from Tuesday evening through to Friday morning. Water causes natural disasters in areas away from London. The South Downs flooded. A rail line washed away in Dawlish on the south coast of Devon. On Wednesday it rained sideways. Yesterday in the park in the straight downpouring rain, empty of nannies and children, a… Continue reading Reprieve
Ahead of me, a traffic warden in his nasturtium-orange rainwear walks beside a construction worker, his rain pants and vest the colour of an almost ripe lemon. The colours of candy, of a PEZ, of a sweet and sour. Slow in their boots, shoulders touching, they turn out of the rain into the organic coffee… Continue reading Street Candy
Sounds of Spring in London. The leafblower replaced by the handheld pressurized water cleaner, cleaning slippery green off sidewalks. Birds turning up the volume, showing off. The clop clop of the hooves of the police horses soft under the jackhammering at the construction site. The park gardeners pause in their leaf-gathering to look at the… Continue reading Sounds
In a January melt in Ottawa there would be sleeves of ice on tree trunks and ice varnishing sidewalk edges. After a winter of rain in London, moss slicks the bottom of walls and walk edgings, and adheres to tree trunks in a bright green, almost fluorescent. Not the deep soft green of moss growing… Continue reading Moss
Brown fronds folded down shawl a palm tree.
DEBRA MARTENS 