Ned Danison, unedited

[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] Having passed the fragrant congee factory, blue meat trucks, and fish ponds, I glided across the campus and stowed my motorcycle with all the others. Up three flights of concrete stairs, through the open-air halls, and into the cavernous teacher’s room I bounded, and there was O’Leary at his [...]

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[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] I am of the opinion that each person can be summed up in a single anecdote. The trick is in finding that particular anecdote, a perfect metaphor that reveals all in correct proportion and obscures nothing. I am still looking for that anecdote to describe Matt O’Leary. But in [...]

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[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] In those days I taught English at a private college plunked down in the middle of fish farms and rice paddies. Besides the wet farms, there were two neighbors: a sprawling pig slaughter enterprise and an ugly gray congee factory. Literally translated from Chinese, congee is “hundred treasure porridge” [...]

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[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] I have to keep using the word throng because it connotes people crowding, jostling, pressing against one another. An American is never really aware of his personal space needs until he finds himself constantly and involuntarily pressed-upon, feeling the breath and body heat of others. With the throng, I [...]

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[Installments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.] Having lost my moorings, having lost the battle against incongruity and arbitrariness, I surrendered, I embraced the absurdity. Before you can understand this, you have to know and love the song “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Then you have to be completely engulfed in it, with the bass pumping the [...]

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