Oh, to find someone who will greet me,In the mornings with sweet kisses of cyanide And deathly painful howls in the midnightRoll me in flavours of your exotic spicePowdered crimson that once ran a floodOnce untamed, madly dangerousSpeak to me in elongated vowelsSlur the alien’s words that come sinful to my sidesPaint my skin, that is your canvas, with faery mannersProve to your Grace that you a...

Hello! I make stop-motion animation philosophy videos atop of the instrumentals I produce. In this video, two birds briefly discuss five ways in which people avoid being free. These methods were outlined in Simone De Beauvoir's seminal work: The Ethics of Ambiguity.I hope you enjoy :) Artin Salimi 

Alexander KAN. Lasting Call: My Return to North Korea     Dedicated to my daughter Katya (Translated by Yoon Kan, Berkeley University of California)   View from the burial hill in the city of Hamhung   Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin with a passage from my first short story, “The Rules of the Game.” Written in 1987, this story defined the meaning and direction of my subsequent work. “An...

Confession of a 42-Year-Old Writer: From a Literature of Frustration to the Literature of Overcoming    Alexandr Kan As with people, objects oftentimes become sources that arouse particular memory of one’s past. Strangely, though, objects seem to hold still the past, present, and future of a person, unlike memory of people which is subject to constant change. I tend to treat all my personal b...

we can measure our life in coffee spoonsand the next thing we know we’re eight coffees deep at four in the morning we can feel our thoughts shocking our brains a physical jolt reminding us we’re alive the clouds look like the cats they’re pretending to bethe seagirls are humming about killer whales and the chains around their fins after eight cups of coffee we are the universe the universe dist...

There is a man who comes by my home sometimes, who I don’t know how to name.I watch him wander up the road,  turning slowly into turtle, trout, boar, and many more, Forcing his way through ten traps made of wicker and lure.Crack crack crackDrowning out the crickets. Strong strides slosh through wet thicket.Hunters eyes, long arms, gentle as a deer, but no fear. Flows on by the stones, unaware....

Is covered in GlitterThat saturates these walls in dim, sparkling lightShowing thousands of us- the same thick rhythmic thudOn the calcified clavicle - thisStone room here to stayAnd we- beatingFlesh between- spinningThe heat of the voice,The thing living betweenTooth and tongueThis fleshy fish seizingAround where it clutches our heart andThis vapid atmosphere- writhingAgainst us as we shine- s...