Bioflash: "One Cell, One World"

The freshwater paramecium is a mobile, microscopic metropolis. In this cellular economy, the nucleus is the capitol, governing transport and protein construction.

Yet it doesn’t know. Its world is a slide on a microscope, its lifespan the attention span of a scientist.

Against water—its very home—the paramecium wages war. Water, made toxic by its abundance, leaks through every wall, constantly being bailed out.

On the transparent desert, the light always burns.

Thousands of oar-like cilia propel the protist forward, its oral groove vacuuming nutrients. Trapped between glass, the paramecium continues its search, eclipsed by an even greater curiosity.

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You can find my other weekly bioflashes here.

Recent & Upcoming publications

"Genocide and Graffiti: Remembering Cambodia's War Torn Past," Travel Thru History, November 2008.

"Thirst," Spotlight on the Arts, November 2008.

"A Fungal Friend," The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, December 2008.

“Billion Dollar Billboard,” “Devolver” & “What's the Meaning of Life?,” Flashshot, December 2008/January 2009.

"Communications Delay," Dark Worlds, Issue 3, TBA.

"Venus," "Penticton," & "Softshell," Every Day Poets, TBA.

Take ecology at Kwantlen!

As most of my readers know, I work as a biology lab instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. One of my recent projects was to create a poster to entice enrollment in my favourite course: ecology.



I used to design such creations for fun's sake. Now, I'm fortunate enough to get paid to be creative. (In a science job, to boot...)

"Parting"

When a heart breaks, and two divide, the body feels consumed. Despair feeds on your insides, as though the stomach’s acid has leaked. Parting is such needed sorrow, to help untie the threads of morphing love, severing some, rearranging others. Hurt seethes beneath the skin, molten suffering ready to rupture. Through that fog the damaged stumble, uncertain and afraid.

Yet a split heart finds another purchase. Each seed of the divided grows with new hope. A common root lies underground, a link that will never break. So while the two hearts may grow apart, their buried love forever remains.

First Post

Welcome to my new blog!

This will be a place for random writings, exercises in creativity, artful musings, explorations of myth, literary failures, grand successes, and other feats of the written word.

The image at the top of the blog is from my novella, "Evolution's End," which was published in Writers of the Future XXII. The bottom photo was taken in Ta Prohm, a Cambodian temple.

And so, my odyssey begins...