Liquid Ink

The official website of Gint Aras, Finalist 2016 CWA Book Award


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New Publication

I haven’t written much here for a while, primarily because I’m at work on some new writing.

In the meantime, I’ve got a short story in this anthology, titled “Open Heart Chicago: An Anthology of Chicago Writing,” edited by Vincent Francone. The story is titled “The Parabola of a Single Bullet Shot into the Night Sky.” It features the things you’ve come to know an love from yours truly, including death, love and mind-bending stuff.


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Zoom reading tonight: TNBBC’s F-Bomb Reading

I’m joining nine other writers this Friday night, May 14th, for a romping f-bomb reading. Hope you’ll join us on Zoom. This is the only literary thing I’ve done since the pandemic started, so I’m a bit excited.

It’s 8:00 PM Eastern Time (That’s 7:00 PM in Chicago, 4:00 AM May 15th in Klaipėda) on Zoom. The Meeting ID is 841 3942 5601, and the Passcode is 001155.

Here’s the flyer:

I’ll be reading from my submission to the Volumes Bookcafe Erotica Anthology, “Between the Covers.”


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Relief by Execution wins prize

Just yesterday, I received unexpected holiday news. My memoir, RELIEF BY EXECUTION: A VISIT TO MAUTHAUSEN, was awarded the Memoir Prize for Books from Memoir Magazine.

Huge thanks to the judges at Memoir Mag. It’s a tremendous honor.


American stuck in Peru during quarantine

I interviewed an American visual artist, Denise Bellezzo, who faced an ordeal trying to get the State Department to repatriate her from an artists’ colony in Peru.

It was published by Untoward Magazine. You can read it here.

A Rubio official had some scathing words: ‘…The individual manning the Peru desk has been ‘tracking’ this issue for a week, but doing nothing and the Ambassador essentially abandoned the post to return to Washington.’ They claimed the Ambassador’s departure was due to ‘medical reasons.‘”

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Photo by Denise Bellezzo


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Let’s reimagine normal

I published a new essay today in Re-Imagining magazine. It’s a response to our collective longing to be able to live our social lives again, though I provoke some questions readers of Liquid Ink will find interesting.

I’m wondering if anyone else is noticing the perception of accelerated time. For me, the days don’t seem to drag, despite me spending almost all of my time in my condo. I sense them barreling forward; it’s almost evening before I’m finished with my late morning chores. Given this, it seems I had inhabited a completely different consciousness when I first submitted that essay to an editor.

How to describe it? When I wrote the essay, I was feeling inquisitive, and I hoped for hope. As the days barrel forward, I’m noticing myself becoming more belligerent. I don’t mean that I argue with people, or that I sense some enemy or assault—I go outside to exercise alone or ride bikes with my children, and I’m hardly active on social media. I also don’t mean that I’ve formed an idea I want to push.

Instead, I feel an alarm going off, and my belligerence is the panic of a man reaching around in a dark room to try to silence it.

But it doesn’t quiet down. It seems to strengthen as my arm reaches and swings more desperately to find it in the dark. Strangely, I’ve longed for this alarm. Sometimes I even feel that I’ve heard it before.

I hope you’ll read my new essay.

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Help save Volumes Bookcafe

If you’re feeling generous, or you’re one of those actually benefiting from the pandemic, wondering how best to share your resources with those in need, I hope you’ll consider donating to Volumes Bookcafe. Click here to access their GoFundMe page.

Volumes holds a unique place in Chicago’s cultural scene. Situated in the heart of Wicker Park, only blocks from Nelson’ Algren’s former home, the bookstore sprung up to become, virtually overnight, an institution in Chicago’s literary community. Bookish but not highbrow, nerdy but not lame, Volumes welcomes absolutely everyone, and sells books, beers, pens, magnets, puzzles or muffins to suit virtually every taste.

When independent publishers Tortoise Books picked up my novel, The Fugue, back in 2016, I faced the daunting task of marketing it with virtually no budget, few leads and limited knowledge of marketing or salesmanship. I looked at a map of Chicago’s bookstores, and decided to walk in to each one to talk about holding some event, or leaving books on consignment.

A lot of bookstores in Chicago aid writers of all stripes. However, the support I received from Volumes was particular in its warmth and openness. They did not look at me like a  formal business partner, or a token that allowed them to claim support for small artists. Because their goal was to create community and foster cultural activity, Volumes welcomed me to a space that felt nothing short of family, and allowed me to access readers I never would have reached without their help. They seemed unaware of how strange, even exotic their habits were. It was just the way they went about selling books.

Well, we’re at risk of losing them. Yes…we’re at risk of losing so much…but saving Volumes is a noble goal, not only for the city: tourists from around the world buy books here, drink coffee here, and feel as welcome as I did when I came to say, “Um, hi. I’m an obscure writer with holes in my pants. Can you help me?”

They helped. Let’s help them.

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Illness and the American Mind

Back in 1996, I was living in Linz, Austria where I had made some British friends. They lived down the street from me in a dorm. One afternoon, I was in their communal kitchen drinking tea and talking.

A group of Erasmus students came in. One was a Swedish woman, 19 years old, terribly worried about something. Her group’s concern drowned out our teatime conversation.

It turned out the woman had a sty. Unsure what it was, she feared the swollen eyelid could get worse or cause blindness. Foreign, she didn’t really know how to go to the doctor, so locals helped her find treatment (a free clinic down the street). They knew a sty was no big deal, but they sincerely wanted to settle her anxiety, and the clinic took her and treated her. 

I was 23 years-old, the only American on the scene. I didn’t share my point of view with anyone, though you can predict what it was.

“What a bunch of wusses.” 

The American mind, consciously and unconsciously, views sickness in much the same way that it views poverty or tragedy: signals of something flawed, wrong or weak with the individual. If you had not done this, you would not be suffering that. If you weren’t this way, you would not be dealing with these outcomes. You’re sick? Prove your worth. Bear it out and get to work.

In the general American mind, default reality is pleasant and safe. If something’s wrong, it must be someone’s fault…someone must have caused reality to shift. The overlying mythology makes this a requirement: America is the greatest country in the world. We don’t just pursue happiness (er…material gain and demonstrative wealth). No…we achieve it, and if we can’t, we pretend to.

We’re just a competitive interest rate away from a wide, dandelion-free lawn, and a driveway boasting shiny cars.

Here in Chicago, I lived among neighbors who tried to one-up each other after Christmas by throwing out packaging. The more they cast to the landfill, the better their Christmas had been (as a credit card company lit a cigar).

These neighbors believed whoever is happier is superior. The proof of happiness is in the spectacle. Look what I’m capable of!   

At least until this point, we have thought of illness this way.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to work sick in America, even when I had the right to call in. I played it off, though sometimes I was miserable. This happened in restaurants, a hotel and a telemarketing center, where I sold subscriptions to Playboy magazine. The workers there sat three feet from each other. Whoever came in after my shift used the phone I had coughed all over.

But I scored points. I was “dedicated.” One manager called me hardcore. A lesser man, the idea went, would not have demonstrated such commitment to a clown show that offered no benefits and could cast me to the dumpster.  

Right now, America does not know how sick it is. We’re not testing enough people. Some brag about our “low rate of infection” as compared to other countries, when in truth the best we can do is estimate. Earlier this month, the president kept people on a ship rather than bring them to shore, and admitted he did to keep the numbers low. It was all about the spectacle.

This is our larger, older illness. It’s one of consciousness, and we’re watching mother nature dismantle it before our eyes. Covid-19 is bullshit proof, bravado proof and mythology proof, at least in the moment. Rising stocks won’t save the billionaire who’ll need a ventilator. We’re facing the test of our generation, and what consciousness comes out on the other side will determine our larger future.

Will we accept the obvious, that the sick are not weak, burdensome or disposable, as the poor are not irresponsible or lazy. No individuals will pull themselves out of this by bootstraps, or whatever cliche you want to use. This will take a collective effort. As we sit in fear of illness, suffering or death, we should also fear we’ll fail to learn the lesson of compassion this moment clearly demands. Will we return to our poisonous mythology of the super-powered individual? Will we learn to see that one person’s loss is not another one’s gain, but that all losses belong to the collective?  

As the poet wrote, so much depends on the answer to this question.    

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Image from Wikipedia.


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Readers ask: Shouldn’t writing make readers comfortable?

This is a great question. Let me roll up my sleeves.

Asking this is similar to criticism I often hear of teachers. People would learn a lot more if teachers made learning interesting and fun. Without getting into the tedium of contemporary schooling, let’s agree that whoever says this probably assumes learning isn’t interesting or fun all on its own.

In the same way, a person demanding comfort from artists must not be feeling it while making their morning coffee. Maybe it’s worse…maybe they’re looking for distraction from whatever they feel or think. They might be seeking reassurance. They can relax because plenty of writers, artists (and teachers) will oblige them.

It’s clearly stupid to make learning boring. But people get this whole thing backwards. If memorizing a list of eventful dates alongside names of dead politicians is boring, maybe it’s because we don’t learn all that much by doing it.

Yet notice what crazy and complicated shit people memorize when self-motivated or linked to community. My son and his friends can tell you meticulous details about the myriad Pokémon characters. When I was a kid, I could recreate AD&D saving throw grids and combat matrices from memory.

Could I recite the names of all 12 apostles?

At a certain point in our development as adults, we end up weighing the difference between tasks that cause immediate discomfort while offering potential for wisdom, community or skill. This is how we learn to play music. It’s how we train to take penalty shots, win street fights, manage large groups of people or sew up wounds. It’s not comfortable for a trauma surgeon to treat a person who fell out of a rolling truck.

Ah…you say…but the surgeon is well compensated!

Sure. But I won’t agree that comfort is commercially viable while discomfort is a liability. Sex, drugs, gambling and arms have proven their commercial demand for millennia. Does porn offer comfort? Does heroin? The roulette table? Is American military might a cause of widespread paranoia or a result? Does it pacify our fear of the world or trigger it?

My favorite books were always the ones that turned me inside out. Some of my favorite writers sent me reeling. Others satirized while entertaining. What does it say, after all, for the answer to life, the universe and everything to be 42?  We laugh because, in the face of absolute ignorance, the alternative is to get fussy.

I could make a fuss. I’ve always been stunned by readers who think their comfort is universal. In other words, if they curl up by a fire to read Agatha Christie, they guess it’s masochism to read Wittgenstein while seated on a rock. Maybe it is. Of course, some people really like to get hooked. It turns them on.

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Photo of Napoleon’s bed from Wikipedia.