"What are we talking about in 2020? Kobe Bryant, Covid-19, social distancing, Zoom, TikTok, Navarro cheerleading, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylore, and...The presidential election. A country divided. Opinions on both sides. It's everywhere: on the news, on the late-night shows, in the papers, online, online, online..." -Elin Hilderbrand (28 Summers) I read an…
Almost two years ago, in the middle of my first winter back on the east coast, I decided that, come March, I was going on a trip. As somebody who likes to travel, there wasn't anything terribly novel about this decision. But I suppose you could say that, given that I was planning on going…
(Greek) light acquires a transcendent quality: it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy. Here the light penetrates directly to the soul, opens the doors and windows of the heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated. - Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi), qtd. in Tony Perottet's…
Volare, oh oh Cantare, oh oh oh oh Let's fly way up to the clouds Away from the maddening crowds We can sing in the glow of a star that I know of Where lovers enjoy peace of mind Let us leave the confusion and all disillusion behind Just like bird of a feather, a…
We have all been brought up on stories from the "Panhandle," the northern part of Texas that is truly the shape and just as flat as the handle of an old pot iron skillet. Perhaps the most famous tale is the myth that in winter there is nothing between Amarillo and the North Pole but…
"This really isn't like anything you ever saw — and no one who tells you about it gives any idea of it." -Georgia O'Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz It was dark when we finally arrived in Santa Fe. More importantly, it was late, almost midnight, which made the city (with a population of 70,000, this is…
I find that time moves differently when you travel, or at least that's how it feels when at each and every turn your senses are being assailed by new sights, smells and flavors. It's both exhilarating and exhausting, an experience that you want to savor, but, by the time you've moved onto the next wonder,…
And for a moment I lose myselfWrapped up in the pleasures of the worldI've journeyed here and there and back again... -Smashing Pumpkins ("Thirty-three") For exactly one week and two days, I have been 33 years old. Despite being a palindrome, I'm not quite sure there's anything all that special about this age, although a…
The night before I left Las Vegas I walked out in the desert to look at the moon. There was a jeweled city on the horizon, spires rising in the night, but the jewels were diadems of electric and the spires were the neon of signs ten stories high. -Norman MailerAlmost three months after the…
I woke up today to a crash downstairs and the sound of breaking glass. At first, I thought I must have been dreaming, but something told me that my dreams had been full of pleasant things, like cake and bunnies, and not of a beagle who, as I discovered when my racing heart and I…
Dining with Dostoevsky 