The Star-Dust Dreamers

By Paul Xylinides

When bad-tempered Humpetty Dumpetty comes to town, he blocks out the sun and soon everyone falls asleep and enters a world of dreams. Everyone, that is, except for himself. He stays awake while everyone sleeps around him. One of their dreams makes him especially angry and so, feeling sorry for himself, he goes and sits on a wall ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Xylinides
• Release date: Sep 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311673701

Paul Xylinides

This profile has to reach as far back as it can since, in this case, meaning begins there. No one knows my grandfather’s original name. At an undetermined age, he fled Russia’s civil wars in the early 20th century and arrived in Greece where he fashioned an identity for himself that was unique and yet of its place. Xylinides, translating as one occupied in some fashion or other with wood (ξύλο), now supplies the nom de plume for whatever I write. I owe the sentiment of this borrowed name to a man whose choices in the face of historical upheaval and existential threat ultimately provided for the existence of myself and others. He died leaving no other record than his forged identity soon after the birth of his daughter. Wherever we find ourselves vast historical winds have deposited us and we remain either subject to their reach or within their unrelenting grip. Residence: Montreal. Education: McGill University, M.A. (English Literature). Mentor: David G. Taylor: Painter, teacher, writer.

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