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Week 5: Recipe for a Protest Movement

What follows is an installment of my Writer’s Diary, which for twelve weeks I am sending every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Hello! It’s nice to see you again. Thank you for opening this email, this erstwhile cheese sandwich blog that has been pressed into duty as a chronicle of protest. Since last Sunday, it feels as though years have passed. Time is so plastic, stretching to fit the weight of events. And 2020 has insisted: stretch, stretch, stretch. It’s been a year for the books,… Read More »Week 5: Recipe for a Protest Movement

Week 4: Beyond the Kitchen Window

. What follows is an installment of my Writer’s Diary, which for twelve weeks I am sending every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. . Hello! And thank you for spending a moment—in this moment—with my words. The first thing to say is that I hope that you and your people are safe. This morning in L.A. was the first since 1992 that the National Guard has walked these streets. The last time before that was in 1968. Each time it has been for the same reason:… Read More »Week 4: Beyond the Kitchen Window

Week 3: Sauerkraut

.What follows is a sample of my Writer’s Diary, which I currently email out every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your inbox, subscribe here. Hello—and a good Memorial Day to you! This is coming a day late, but isn’t the Monday of a three-day weekend really, on a spiritual level, a Sunday? My whole life I’ve thought of Memorial Day as the “unofficial beginning of summer.” Somewhere along the line I also learned that it’s the date after which it’s “okay” to wear white. A good weekend to barbecue! Yesterday it… Read More »Week 3: Sauerkraut

Week 2: the Great Sandwich

What follows is a sample of my Writer’s Diary, which I currently email out every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your inbox, subscribe here. . Hello! I’m glad to have you again for another installment of this, what I’m calling a writer’s diary. Though to be honest, when I’m really writing in my private diary, it’s not with you guys in mind. Sorry. This here is a diary more in the sense of a video game development diary—a genre often ignored but that offers real pleasures. The best word for what… Read More »Week 2: the Great Sandwich

Week 1: Salsa Ranchera

. What follows is a sample of my Writer’s Diary, which I currently email out every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your inbox, subscribe here. . Hello! And Happy Mother’s Day! Also, welcome back. It’s been a while since I’ve sent out this email diary. If you’ve enjoyed it in the past, I apologize for the long hiatus. And if you’ve not enjoyed it, I’m sorry to again bombard you with free content. (There’s an unsubscribe button somewhere down there.) The truth is that I’ve missed sending this out. I’m hungry… Read More »Week 1: Salsa Ranchera

Jasper as Photographer

Photographic media—silver halides, digital sensors, optical nerves—are the most direct way to capture light. That’s why I use them whenever I get the chance. From when I built a camera obscura in my dorm room to when my first camera was stolen to when I got my first smartphone, cameras are a big part of how I interact with the world. Today I mostly post photos here on this website. Peruse my albums from an early summer in Maine, an apocalyptic western road trip, and a trip to the desert. Below you can find my latest photographic postings on this… Read More »Jasper as Photographer

Jasper as Writer

Where would I recommend you start? If you’re a fiction-lover like me, maybe you would enjoy a story about an occult ritual with an old cell phone. If you prefer poems, why not try this piece of doggerel, about a cat who ran away. As far as essays, read this hybrid recipe about childhood and tacos or a travelogue about two Tibetan printmaking monasteries. Further Highlights Selected fiction includes a story about sexual frustration and bringing in the weed harvest, a collaboration with a painter that led to a multimedia tale of electricity and loss, and a story about a… Read More »Jasper as Writer

World-Building Essay Wins Award

. I’m pleased to note that my essay “Building Coherent Fantasy Worlds: Taoism and Earthsea” has been awarded the 2019 Library Research Award from Antioch University Los Angeles. The award came with a $700 purse, and I gave a short presentation on my research methods and process at a ceremony on May 15. . The award committee made this comment in awarding the prize: . “Your work ‘Building Coherent Fantasy Worlds: Taoism and Earthsea’ was excellent, exemplary. The committee was especially impressed and moved by the ways you traversed the concepts of Taoism and of LeGuin, both a melding and a… Read More »World-Building Essay Wins Award

A White Male Writer

. The literary journal Your Impossible Voice has just published my story, “A White Male Writer,” which I hope that you’ll read either on its website or in the print edition. Here are its opening lines: . He was a white male writer, and—despite having kissed a few boys at a Halloween party last year, even letting one stroke his bare chest, despite the occasional fantasy in which other boys featured — he knew he was for all practical and self-image purposes straight. So there it was: he was a man with light complexion and heterosexual leanings who wrote fiction, and he… Read More »A White Male Writer