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goat, jalapenos and bottles of Pearl beer
that the truth is finally revealed.
    He’s had four Pearl beers and is talking
very affectionately about the old homestead way back there in the 1930s when he
finally blurts out, “Did you know that I saw a ghost in that house? There was a
ghost there.”
    Everybody stops eating and drinking and
looks at one another without really looking at one another. The table is very
silent. His oldest sister, fifty-live, puts her fork down.
    Then his brother says, “I thought I was the
only one who saw a ghost there. I was afraid to mention it. I thought you would
all think that I was crazy. Was it the ghost of an old woman with long hair?
Was she wearing a nightgown?”
    “Yes, that’s her.”
    There is more silence and one of the
sisters breaks it by saying, “I saw her, too. She used to come and stand by my bed
and touch my hair. I was afraid to tell.”
    Then they all turn toward the remaining
sister who just nods her head slowly. They sit there. Texas children are playing
in the background. Their voices are running and happy.
    He reaches over and takes his bottle of
Pearl beer and holds it out in a toasting motion toward an abandoned house a
hundred miles away and says, “Here’s to her and to all of us these many years
later.”
    This is the end of a ghost story.

There Is No Dignity,
Only the Windswept Plains
of Ankona
    There is no dignity, only the
windswept plains of Ankona, he thought as he looked at the calendar and wondered
if the year 3021 would be as boring as the year 3020. That could not be possible,
he thought, but then he reconsidered the past. The year 3019 had been just as
boring as 3018 and it had been the same as 3017. There was no difference
between them. They were all twin years of each other.
    He examined the past very carefully in his
mind and the years had all been very boring ever since he had come to Ankona in
2751 as an experiment to see if a human being could live on the windswept
plains for 500 years by himself.
    Well, they could God-damn it! he thought,
and then tried not to think about the 231 years he had left before the experiment
would be completed.
    He would like to have met the mastermind
who thought up this thing, but the sound of the wind gradually silenced his
mind and its anger until he could hear nothing but the wind blowing across the
plains of Ankona.

The Tomb of
the Unknown Friend
    I saw somebody on the street yesterday
that I almost knew very well. It was a man with a kind and interesting face.
Too bad we had never met before. We might have been very close friends if only
we had met. When I saw him I almost felt like stopping and suggesting that we
have a drink and talk about old times, mutual friends and acquaintances:
Whatever happened to so and so? and do you remember the night when we…?
    The only thing missing was that we had
shared no old times together to talk about because you have to meet somebody
before you can do that.
    The man walked by me without any
recognizing expression. My face wore the same mask, but inside I felt as if I almost
knew him. It was really a shame that the only thing that separated us from
being good friends was the stupid fact that we had never met.
    We both disappeared in opposite directions
that swallowed any possibility of friendship.

Cooking Spaghetti
Dinner in japan
    Yesterday, being yesterday in Tokyo, I
cooked a spaghetti dinner for some Japanese friends. I bought the ingredients
in a supermarket that specializes in food for foreigners.
    These are the things that I bought:
    tomato paste,
    tomato sauce,
    green and red peppers,
    mushrooms,
    sweet basil,
    a can of pitted black olives,
    pasta,
    olive oil,
    400 grams of hamburger meat,
    some butter,
    two bottles of red wine,
    and Parmesan cheese.
    I took the ingredients to a Japanese friend’s
house and she had the rest of the things that I needed:
    3 yellow onions,
    oregano,
    parsley,
    sugar,
    salt and pepper,
    garlic.
    And then I started cooking