“You’ll be working at least seventeen hours on Election Day,” he said. “So bring a sandwich.”
Tonight’s first presidential debate was a fitting spectacle for a degraded nation.
If I’ve gleaned anything from keeping this glum journal throughout this year, it’s that I keep returning to the language of grief.
It’s my mind that kills me, the constant looking at my watch until I remember how to forget about time.
But tonight there’s light rain, our windows are open to the city’s hum, and there’s something dark and slow on the radio.
We’re leaving the Ohioan wilderness behind, night-driving back to New York.
In a superstore parking lot this evening, I watched some geese fly south, and remembered my parents’ relationship with birds.
Three moments in America today that reach beyond my ability with words, striking only the rudimentary language of grief.
We’re standing on the verge of an uneasy fall, unsure of just how high the curve will go.
A modern marvel where you can eat fast food on top of eight lanes of freeway traffic.
Last bonfire before we return to the city.
There’s a problem with modern grief, a rupture that cannot be filled with squishy words like mindfulness and acceptance.
Looking at the state of the world today, perhaps we need more architectural details designed to scare away demons.
Five thousand years ago we began outsourcing prayer and devotion to statues that would worship on our behalf.
The deer didn’t seem alarmed by my presence. It just watched me while munching some foliage.
Like painting legs on a snake. My in-laws taught me this Chinese idiom, a scold against unnecessary embellishment.
Sometimes I fall asleep thinking about the ancient atomists.
This has been a year of references to plague novels and the dystopian skies of science fiction.
My breath catches in the existential and super-saturated detergent aisle: All. Era. Gain. Cheer. Bold.
Nineteen years ago but it still feels like it was just the other day.
