One dead sheep in the middle of the trail could be anything. But two? This smacked of human agency. Or the supernatural.
Essays
She Was Almost There
I was beginning to get embarrassed, though I was the one who had invited them to watch.
Apprehension, or size 6 knee-length empire-waist strapless in burnt sienna silk shantung with pomegranate bow band
You would like to believe that the panic attack you had in Soho had nothing to do with the bridesmaid’s dress you selected moments before.
The Hit
I think
deer season (which started this weekend) freaks the deer out so
much that they start doing crazy things like running around hunting
for cars to crash into when they SHOULD be sleeping.
Running Out of Time
I am running through the halls of Paumanok Elementary School. I’m not late. Tardiness hasn’t occurred to me yet. "No running in the halls!" is a constantly necessary reprimand for children, while conversely it is quite difficult to get an adult to run. He or she must be under some grave duress like chasing a […]
An Unbridgeable Distance
His idea of America lay in the world of myth. The kid was young, uneducated, sleeping on the streets.
Tiny Kline
Did you know she crossed Times Square in the air? Did you know she can hang from the sky by her teeth?
Save You Sometimes
Sometimes she claims to have read one of my books. How can she imagine anyone believing this?
No Epiphany in the Bakery
Why have I bought this cranberry muffin? It sits on a glass plate by the window seat of the Destination Baking Company—a small muffin, the top crunchy with sugar, the berries bleeding into the yellow bread. My action seems ordinary, and yet I am not hungry. The muffin hollows out around the cranberries like a […]
Diamonds in the Red Alley
At the time they wouldn’t have known or remembered the Ukrainian famine from Stalinist times that killed millions or Khruschev’s expensive failure at growing corn. Long live Communism!
Shiva Dancing
I don’t leap out rushing into the heat. It’s easier after all to stay put, sitting in the car praying for it to begin moving again. Come on, hold on, breathe.
Sylvia Ginsberg, Superstar
Grandma Sylvia, complainer or not, seemed to me as worthy of media attention as any TV star, socialite or business mogul in a celebrity-obsessed culture.
Body Waxing, Lord Byron and the Long Way through Turkey
In a stall in the men’s changing room at the Central London YMCA my challenge has become clear.
The Perimeter Man
Society and the people seem to want to be terminally
‘busy.’ Everyone wants a phone in the car. No one wants
any free-time. The assumption here is that free-time is wasted time,
time better spent getting stuff and getting ahead.
Anorexic, In a Mexican Restaurant
At the Mexican fast-food stand one block from home, I was nine and in line three times a week for a bean and cheese burrito. It was 1975, the year we moved away from my father.