these fine collapses @ desmonddahm.com

Worlds upon worlds

Imagine you’re a fisherman living on the banks of the Nile. You don’t yet know it, but your catch has made the Pharaoh and his family ill. In the middle of the night you wake to sounds of your reed-built shack being ransacked. You freeze at the glint of light in the shape of the…

Cafe sua da, veganized.

Vietnamese Iced Coffee – oh yes! I love cafe sua da, the traditional Vietnamese strong chicory coffee. iced, with condensed milk. In all its linguistic glory, the drink is called Cafe sữa đá, but we just say “su da.” Briefly, chicory has been used in coffee since at least the 18th century. The French brought…

100 weasels, or why reading is good for the country

I just finished reading a novel for the first time in a while. Following a daring young woman in Churchill’s SOE, through a maze of clues, set-backs and close-calls, it was unusually satisfying when the author led me to an ending, good and true. I expect that’s because it’s less of a given, lately, that things will…

A serious soup need not be deadly.

” There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, Whatever you are!” — from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol I spent a year trying to convince myself that some of the meat-based stews and soups I often cook were fine without meat. Vegan vegetable, hot and sour and cream of broccoli gave me no difficulty. Lentil soup and…

“On your bike.”

Since I now have a bike, that oddly gentle British way of telling someone to bug off doesn’t seem such a bad thing. Like the phrase, cycling is an oddly gentle exercise. My joints, which have been with me for some time, now protest after I repeatedly throw them onto the pavement. And bike riding…

Common Knowledge

A very short story. “Ach!” the usher snapped, “This seat is for Monsieur Chapon.” Three-quarters of the way down the runway, stage right, the seat is eventually occupied by a man of average height in a light weight, single-breasted grey flannel suit. His identity is common knowledge. A taller man in black, believed to be…

Sailing the Aegean it is not

Like a story long told from village to village, after a trip with many trials of spice and siren, naysayers and cyclops, I give you a bright splash at which even Odysseus might not have turned up his nose. Happily, I have reached what is probably the last iteration of my attempt to recreate our…