Category: Guest Posts

Quiche, Coffee & The Morning Pages…

Guest post
by Mira Prabhu

It’s the Manhattan winter of 1992, less than three months since I’ve left my mate of fourteen years, losing, in one fell swoop, all the solid props of my life.

To stay financially afloat, I take on freelance administrative gigs in arguably the planet’s most frenzied and high-stakes city.

Weeks are busy, but weekends are poisoned with a high-octane cocktail of anxiety, guilt and confusion; I cannot seem to extricate myself from the tangled nest of viperous thoughts that paralyze me into a state of chronic despair. Have I done right in placing personal integrity above the comfort of family and economic security? Continue reading “Quiche, Coffee & The Morning Pages…”

Playing in the Sand—Or how I Became an Author in one Therapy Session

Guest post
by Stefan Bolz

It all began when my colleague told me about her friend who had computer problems. I have been writing for a while, mostly poetry, a few screenplays and the beginnings of a novel when I was seventeen.

But I never considered myself a writer and I never—never—could have dreamed up what that incidental encounter had in store for me. It all started with a faulty wireless connection and a new printer.

I seem to have good computer karma and my colleague at work thought I could make some extra money by setting up her friend’s, computer with her printer at her home. When I got to her house, she asked me very nonchalantly about the date and time of my birth. As I found out, she is an excellent Astrologer. I gave it to her and, for the next hour or so, she told me all about where my sun is and which house I was born in and the whole problem with Gemini. Continue reading “Playing in the Sand—Or how I Became an Author in one Therapy Session”

Is Dystopia the New Utopia?

author K.P. AmbroziakGuest post
by K. P. Ambroziak

In 1516, Sir Thomas More coined the term utopia. I can’t actually prove this—none of the people who knew him are around today—but the claim is based on the notion that the name first appeared in his most renowned work, Utopia. The work was written in Latin, but the word itself is borrowed from the Greek—a marriage of ou meaning no, and topos meaning place. It seems only natural More went to the Greeks for his no-place; they had been discussing utopian premises since Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BCE), and maybe even before.

A utopia is a perfect society, a place where class and station don’t exist, money and poverty are irrelevant, all people are free and equal, education is meant for everyone, and the collective makes decisions in a fair and democratic manner. Simply put, utopia is fantasy. Continue reading “Is Dystopia the New Utopia?”

Words, Wonderful Words

Guest post
by Jo at Inknbeans Press

I read a lot of words. I read submissions from strangers which, in some ways, are the best kind because I’m not pre-disposed to love them simply because I know and love the author. I also read every word every one of our Beans* present to us because that’s our arrangement – they write, I read.

When I was much younger, I played in a community orchestra. I won’t tell you what instrument I played. It is sufficient to say that my greatest contribution to music is that I am an avid fan, however they needed someone to fill that second chair and I could hold the instrument without looking like a fool, so there I was. There was a young woman who, by some cruel jerk of the strings of nepotism, was frequently invited to sing with us. She was quite confident of her operatic vocal skills, though equally proud of her untrained status. In short, she would have been excellent at Coldstone, singing a few bars of some thank-you song when someone left a tip, and not much else. In much shorter, she stank. Continue reading “Words, Wonderful Words”