Archive

Cold

When I was young, it was warmer. One-hundred and six, one-hundred and five, one-hundred and nine—the whole twelve-day forecast went on like that in the summers. They said you could cook an egg on a car dash. My parents never let me try that. Still, they did stretch and

Dressing Well

And How to Define It

Plomp, Plomp, Plomp

There's a cricket on the sidewalk. And there's a toad. Plomp—the weigh of the toad slaps the sidewalk; a dreadful boggy sound that must rattle the exoskeleton of the cricket. It twitches an antenna. Plomp, goes the toad, and the bug is in real danger.

Emotion Review – Limbic Rage

There is an anger that you nurse and tend, and which makes you feel wretched and powerful. This is not that anger. This is something that comes on you like an attack from behind. It makes you feel wretched, but it makes you feel weak; not because you lack the

The Beast in the Bed

A Real-Life Tale of Home-Invasion

Keeping Christmas

The time for Christmas is now!

Subway Talk

Trapped in a subway with the king of hot takes

They Have a Good Thing Going

A review of the filmed Merrily We Roll Along.

He Was the Real Thing

I have only known Tom Stoppard in a small way, through reading his plays, which I’ve never even seen performed. And yet, when I saw the retrospectives and obituaries last week, I felt that a pillar had been knocked out of our cultural temple as English speakers. Stoppard was

Emotion Review - Unrequited Love

Imagine that you’ve been eating bland food all your life and suddenly you discover salt. It’s a revolution. The miraculous little mineral makes everything it touches better. How did you ever live without it? But imagine that this particular salt you’ve discovered triggers a craving. You put

Gratitude

A Sermon

The High-School Essay Problem

There’s a problem that crops up for the argumentative writer which I call “the high-school essay problem.” In high school, you’re taught—I was, at least—to stake out, early in your essay, a clear thesis. A claim you’ll go to bat for, a hill you’ll

Missing

You and I go back a long ways, back to kitchen counter conversations and air-conditioned afternoons. I paced the tile floors and sucked a spoon of peanut butter, you pounded water and leaned against the cabinets. We were young in those days, sure of ourselves. We had everything in the

I Saw Masquerade

And I liked it even better than Ariel's Undersea Adventure

Dress Like You’re Selling Something

As a writer, I like to find words for things. String of words that build strangely compelling phrases. Lone words that encapsulate. Even technical terms bring delight—how satisfying it is to distinguish electrocution from electrification, to know an aviary from an apiary! Add to this my love for good

Sitting Down on a Wet Afternoon to Write

My books are all organized and stacked on the floor, my chamomile-rooibos-mint blend is brewed up and just slightly too warm to drink, a jazz record that I picked without great discretion or taste is playing from my computer—the mood is conducive to writing. So, let’s write. But:

My Life Without a Smartphone

A Memoir?

Let’s Be Romantics

An Antidote to Anomie

Button Reviews

I'm going to go easy on you...

Moby Dish

Call me Dishmael...