Semi-Urban Cartography

A blanket of snow came in a rush on Tuesday night. No one predicted it until moments before when weather models acquiesce and precious barometric electricity takes over. The warm, wet front that the authorities correctly called for pushed in on the city from the ocean. What it didn’t do was push the cold front [...]

Teach your children. Teach your parents. Take the time along the way to teach yourself — that’s the sentiment I keep reminding myself is crucial. Unlike most people I encounter throughout this walk, I don’t make proper New Years resolutions: I make birthday pacts and resolutions (that day which is my watershed, January 21st). In [...]

“Love Is A Dog From Hell” rejected for it’s unmarketable title. Bar fighters (especially the loud ones, the mad ones) don’t improve their pugilistic. They make the evening news circuit. Live at 5:00, 6:30 and 11:00. Face notorious. Updates on-line regarding their whereabouts. No novel, Post Office. The arcade of whores and “mad women” who [...]

The search for meaning on the backdrop of this season seems apropos. I woke up this morning to the same alarm clock (albeit a little later than usual). When I turned on NPR the news discussed oil prices, instability in Afghanistan’s leadership, health care, the job market and a disappointing first year in the Obama [...]

In my thoughts frequently these days is the idea that being creative is an act of self-preservation. For some. I get up two hours earlier than necessary to write each morning because I spiritually have to; in my day-to-day work, encounters stage as events in a larger fictional realm; the gumption to get up the [...]

Sometimes it’s a very tactile thing we associate. Marcel Proust had his madeleine cookies and tea moment that spurred on a copious rush of long forgotten childhood memories (many volumes, to the delight of modern literature the world over). There are chilled times, especially around Christmas that the most hardened of us stop and do [...]

Random thoughts from the end of the week/weekend: Cat paw prints appeared on the stove top overnight. At 3:30 I was awoken by a cat between my knees, rendering me unable to move from side to side. Iggy. I rolled over and he simply went with me — then I lifted him off and dropped [...]

When I was in grade and middle school, the mile run test was abject torture. My feet are bad. I preferred the sit-up or stretch tests. There has never been much strength there in my ankles and flat bottomed feet, and at random times throughout my youth I could be described as quite out of [...]