My Salt of the Earth Types
I am sitting on New Jersey Transit in the middle of the car, going to Spring Lake. I’m close to the car doors and from where I sit, I hear two men talking as they stand. These are your salt of the...
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Buy Bushwick Nightz: A Life Update
Leo Birthday Monday is my 26th birthday, part of what is supposed to be my best birthday month for over a decade, as the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Jupiter align in my sign. My early twenties are fully...
View ArticleMy 50 Best Films of All Time
This best films of all time listing started when I was 14, and I discovered the AFI 100 Years, 100 Films List. I spent most of my summer watching movies and at the end, my best friend and I tried to...
View ArticleHow I Learned to Play Stickball
Before we moved we stayed with my grandfather for a few days in the Bronx. I can’t remember if we had already sold our house or our new house wasn’t ready, or they had to truck our cars across the...
View ArticleLast Night I Was Nebuchadnezzar
I, Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, have conquered lands far and wide, from the Great Sea in the West to the Gulf in the east, from Nineveh in the North to Ur in the South, along both Tigris and...
View Article…Where I Settle Into Derangement
Yesterday I was in a cafe where a woman I went to college with was sitting across the room from me, the girl I named the female antagonist in my book after. I wondered if I would talk to her; she...
View ArticleHow to be Content
1. The Beginning of Discontent There comes a time in the evening, after nine or ten o’clock, when I cannot force myself to do any more “work” for the day. I have read my quota, and written for about...
View ArticleHeavy Water
The inside of a room with canvas on the walls and Christmas lights around the ceiling is where I feel most at home. Tough, it was tough to leave this room, which resembled the inside of a heart, with...
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Inherent Vice: An Anti-Review
Coming out of ‘Inherent Vice’, I heard a couple of goobers trying to decipher exactly where the FBI fit in in the labyrinthine plot. They were missing the point. Paul Thomas Anderson is probably the...
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On Art in Rome
In the same way we define the beginning of the modern era with the work of Shakespeare and Cervantes, in hundreds of years from now future humans will describe the modern era as beginning with the...
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Fee Simple Absolute
Past The sky was mauve and the snow glowed neon, little flurries bouncing through the air toward my window like flies and I, entranced by the scene, alone, was reluctant to sleep. I wanted to catch...
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Borysthene (Dnieper)
As I crossed the Dnieper, I wondered if Putin really did have a claim to Ukraine, if, like Crimea, this river and its drainage basin were “part of the Russian fatherland,” and if so, notwithstanding,...
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Nights in Cuadra Picha
Michael’s weekend doesn’t really begin until eight or nine, after thoughts of selling phones recede in his mind and he’s on the bus all the way to the south of the city, about an hour away. When he...
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Stuck in Another’s Apartment
The other morning I was in the first apartment I’d ever shown. Including the open house the day before, it was my fourth time showing it. I was waiting for an Israeli mother who had to okay her...
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The Real And The Unreal—How Are We To Write?
Credit: newstatesman.com The Norwegian novel, My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the most famous autobiographical work in recent memory. His honest portraits of reality help us reflect on our own...
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My 500th Post!
The man woke the boy early, while the mother was still in bed. “Where are we going?” the boy asked, his voice unfamiliar from sleep. “We have a meeting, said the father. “Get dressed and come...
View ArticleThree Year Old Journal Entry
Based on the facts, today was a great day. I woke up late, got to work on time, got taken out for a $20 meal, wasn’t bothered by anyone, left when I had completed my seven hours, had an appointment...
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Paestum: Home to The Best-Preserved Greek Temples in the World
About an hour south of Naples are the ruins of a twenty five hundred year old city called Paestum. Humans have inhabited this region for more than 250,000 years, living in caves along the seashore...
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The Yoke of Freedom
In the morning, even before I woke up, my chains were freedom. I was paralyzed in a casserole of unconsciousness. My coffee turned to grounds, my face was bloated and angry, everyone around me was...
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Six Poems From Toronto
I. The morning sun shone and rain seemed less likely. Maple tree boughs blew, greenish-blue waters emerged in the distance. Tall, glass-faced towers flanked our right, beyond the tracks. The New Yacht...
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