33 is the year that Jesus Christ embraced His life... ...Wasn't he crucified at 33, I ask, depressed, deserted by his friends, divorced from god, sub… - Julia Alvarez

The tarragon dotted the rice in the cauldron.
And now, as if signaled, the spice jars popped open,
unladened their far east wonders:
cumin, turmeric, saffron, and endives.
The aunts each put in a shake of their favorites.
The steam unwrinkled their frowns from their faces.

The typical Bildungsroman, the novel of growing up, first of all traditionally involves a single character reaching a kind of epiphany or self-realization, and it has a forward trajectory, which is the classic structure of the novel. But I wanted to structure the novel so that the reader can experience, not by being told but shown, what it feels like to be an immigrant – you’re always going back, going back to where you came from to measure who you are today. So plot in a novel is not just how you’re going to fit all the pieces together or how you’re going to do the chronology. Plot is more sophisticated than that. It’s a way of structuring the way the reader thinks and feels.

I'm watching a romantic play
in Plato's cave; half the time I don't
believe in it...
Other times I'm so addicted I'm one of the mainliners...
hallucinating that in truth a man's
body is one of the Absolute Forms.
I look around when the houselights come on
and see no one!