Journal
Dispatches and speculations from the American roadside.
Ghost
The first gods must have been born while we slept.
Stranger
Nearly every advertisement on the subway trumpets the virtue of having your favorite meals, outfits, entertainments, mattresses, and toothbrushes delivered straight to your door.
Dreams
Waking up this morning, the world doesn’t feel much different from the illogic of sleep.
Powerball
The only noise tonight is the highway and it sounds like the sea.
Clutter
I catch a glimpse of a beloved actor from the 1980s smiling across three flatscreens in an empty lobby, encouraging everyone to triple reverse-mortgage their homes.
Badlands
Strange how I’m embarrassed to write our president’s name, a name that looks like an obscenity on the page. Maybe it’s because I thought we deserved a worthy villain.
Decision
I scroll down the aisles of the office supply store, soothed by the racks of folders, binders, and containers that promise an organized and efficient life.
Twilight
‘Civil twilight’ is an elegant term for the moment just before the sun sinks beneath the horizon. It might be a fitting name for these strange years.
Boot
My eighty-year-old German neighbor and I picked at our omelettes while a television in the corner of the diner delivered the vote count.
Change
New York City. The skyline stopped me in my tracks this afternoon, reminding me that I live in an increasingly alien city.
Seeing
Walking down street tonight, I find myself paying closer attention to shadow and light, reminding myself that yes, this is plenty.
Birthday
I wonder if deep down each of carries a fantasy of one day becoming an ascetic or a mystic, some hardwired notion of stripping our lives bare and praying in the gloom.