March 26th, 2010
Leave it to America to present a geriatric sexuality on its biggest stage, in swift and sharp reaction to the one moment a naked boob was seen on live television.That single second of boob exposure catapulted us into a now six-year cycle of men in the target market for Viagra.
February 6th, 2009
I.
The problem with the noise was that it silenced the silence. Now, in the spaces between sirens and garbage trucks and screams and shouts and machinery heavy and light, in those places where there should have been silence, there was only more noise.
It wasn’t a loud noise, but it was a constant noise. [...]
December 12th, 2008
My Grandpa Sam died on November 19. He was almost 90. This is what I read at his funeral.
“Emily,” my Grandpa Sam would say, “I have something very important to tell you.” It was always either one of two things. “Stay the course!” he’d say sometimes. [...]
April 18th, 2008
I
There is only one place that hasn’t changed in my entire life, and I am in it. I am in the country.
My grandparents own a country house about an hour outside the city, near a lake called Lake Celeste. When I was a kid, we called it, simply, “the country.” It looked like the [...]
December 11th, 2007
One of my more difficult kids today, champion eye-roller, adenoidal whiner, one who feels the indignity of being sixteen more acutely than most and takes it out on me. Probably doesn’t even need a tutor, seems to pick up a decent understanding of the material from class, but highly unmotivated, vulnerable to that oldest [...]
October 12th, 2007
In a few moments the red timer will ring. It just did. It is exactly 4:00 p.m.
The red timer marks off the ten minutes for which I boil my eggs (which leaves the yolk just the tiny bit soft, but not liquid) the three minutes for which I steep my coca tea (which [...]
September 25th, 2007
Just before I left on my most recent international adventure my parents came to Brooklyn for dinner. Upon entering my apartment, they thrust a Xeroxed, stapled sheaf of paper in my face.
“Just sign this,” said my dad.
He had put a little “sign here,” Post-It flag on the last page. My dad is an [...]
July 2nd, 2007
I had skipped ahead to the end of the Hemingway novel and knew it was sad. The soldier’s lover hemorrhaged after their baby was born dead. I read slowly from the middle after that, dreading the ending.
But now on the train to the airport I was close to the end. The soldier [...]
April 4th, 2007
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon writing in the New York Public Library. I thought it might be different to write in an enormous room full of marble and hardwood. It wasn’t. I was still there and so was the blank page. It was just like writing at home, except that when I leaned back in [...]