Lima, Peru
Having neatly skipped over a summer of salient details–reconstructionist Judaism vs. reformed, East Coast vs. West, wealthy enclaves of Long Island’s East End vs. those of the Cape Cod’s outer reaches, the life span of a human vs. that of a golden retriever and therefore weddings vs. funerals and therefore love vs. death–I come to […]
Read MoreReading Hemingway on BART on the way to jetBlue Flight 644
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 and his […]
Read MoreMy (i)Life is Flashing Before My Eyes
Got a new computer last week. Had to perform a migration. Still performing the migration, actually. Cleared everything off my desk, books, papers, pictures. Got a big desk. Big glass desk. Wiped it down with glass cleaner. Wiped down the old computer with iKlear, the only spray-on computer cleaner recommended for Macintosh computers. Took the […]
Read More"You Gotta Believe"
Rebecca’s birthday present this year was two tickets to see the Mets at Shea Stadium. After a bag search and full-body metal-detector sweeping, we made it to our seats just in time to sit out the national anthem. I like to get to a ball game on time, if only for the pleasure of publicly […]
Read MoreOne of Many
7:00 a.m. Alarm wakes me from sex dream. (Just so we’re clear, uncomfortable details of the sex dream will not herein be revealed.) The day is off to a resounding start as already a discovery has been made, a point proven: alarms are dangerous and can wake you from sex dreams. It is one of […]
Read MoreThe Great Lawn
The crowd at the playground at 85th and Central Park West is about half nannies, half mommies, with the nannies up by a woman or two. There are Thai nannies, Indian nannies, Caribbean nannies, Dominican nannies, post-collegiate American nannies, matronly nannies. Some of the nannies are like mommies, wiping noses, feeding Cheerios one by one, […]
Read MoreI Can READ
For New Yorkers, I will be reading this Sunday, April 15, in the Tax Day edition of the Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood reading series, at Mo’ Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction on Avenue A between 2nd and 3rd Streets. Come for the name alone! It’s at 8:00 and it’s FREE. I am one of four, and the […]
Read MoreSo It Goes
Just the other day I said that Kurt Vonnegut would say, about the death thing, So it goes, and now he’s gone. I am one of the doubtless many who counts Vonnegut among my heroes. I saw him speak once, on a panel about the Patriot Act at the New School, and I touched him […]
Read MoreGrand Central, 5:45 p.m.
The other day I bought myself an ice cream cone and ate it standing still in the center of Grand Central Station at 5:45 p.m. I can highly recommend this experience to anyone. Go to the Ben & Jerry’s by the steps to the 4-5-6 trains and get yourself a cone in your favorite flavor. […]
Read MoreBookstore Blindness and Dental Deformity
For a long time I’ve had these terrible recurring nightmares that I’m going blind in a bookstore. This could be because since I was a small child I’ve spent a lot of time in bookstores, browsing myself into a narcotic stupor until my eyes actually do give out and my vision begins to blur. My […]
Read More