Sparrow | The Sun Magazine #3

Sparrow

Sparrow lives in a double-wide trailer in Phoenicia, New York. He has published eleven books, including Small Happiness & Other Epiphanies. Sparrow’s new band, Truffles, is an acoustic anarchist quartet. It seems to be a hit. You can follow him on Twitter: @Sparrow14.

— From July 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Winter Of My Discontent

January 10: My wife and I recently moved from suburban New Jersey back to the heart of New York’s Catskill Mountains: the town of Phoenicia. It’s difficult returning here in winter. Everyone we meet has a lost, distracted look, as if they’ve already watched their entire video collection twice and now spend their evenings staring up at the spot where two walls meet the ceiling.

March 2013
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Fifteen Ways To Survive The Coming Collapse Of Civilization

Everyone knows that Western civilization (and probably Eastern civilization too) will collapse on December 21, 2012. The Mayans predicted it, and the Mayans have never been wrong. The question is: how will you survive? The answer is simple.

December 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Please Don’t Vote For Me

The Right claims that Occupy Wall Street is secretly dominated by anarchists, but the real inner cabal is composed of smart academics. This movement has learned from all the failed activism of the last forty years. In the 1960s young hippies attempted to overthrow the established order, but their values were completely opposed to those of the working class. Now the young hippies have signs that say, We Are the 99%. (Besides, the working class is no longer scared of long hair.) The Occupiers also refuse to be pushed to the left. They don’t attack capitalism or even the war in Afghanistan. They just say over and over, “Why did they bail out the banks but not us?”

November 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Poor Sparrow’s Almanac

I vowed to write a new series of proverbs to counteract Franklin’s and free Americans from busyness and worry. My goal is to assemble an army of daydreamers.

August 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Hurricane

I write this at my parents’ home in Brooklyn as Hurricane Irene is approaching. Citizens are flocking to stores, buying out shelves of food. The mayor and the governor are issuing stern warnings. The television is talking nonstop, calling it a “monster storm,” measuring its winds at 105 miles per hour. This may be the “Storm of the Century.”

May 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Conversations With A Tree

Every morning I’d have an audience with my tree. I always began by saying, “Namaskar,” which is Sanskrit for “I salute the divine within you with my entire mind and heart.” Standing before the tree, I’d hear words in my head that weren’t my own. I suspected the tree was actually speaking to me, and I began a journal of our conversations.

September 2011
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Six Lost Books

A writer is in a perpetual struggle with emptiness. He or she awakens each day to the Blank Page and somehow finds words to fill it. But the next day the page returns, just as blank as before. Even a finished book carries traces of emptiness, behind the words and in the corners of the pages. Normally this emptiness is white, but I am confronted with the rarer black variety.

March 2011
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

How I Went Punk

Researching the Clash’s lyrics online, I was startled to discover that they rhyme — though the words are impossible to understand! How touching, like putting on your best shirt to visit your blind aunt.

November 2010
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Prayer For The Dead

My car died today in Catskill, New York. Her name was Rhonda: Rhonda the Honda. My wife had her in reverse when we suddenly heard a loud CRONK and the front of the car sank to the ground. A ball joint had broken, and the left front wheel had fallen off. (Three people later told me we were lucky: if we’d been driving on the highway, our car might have flipped over!)

July 2010
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Eat Your Dreams

The next day, while recounting the dream to my wife, I realized I had discovered the perfect diet, one that allows the dieter to feast on any food and never gain weight. The secret is to eat in your dreams.

May 2010
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Spring Comes To New Jersey

I’ve been thinking lately about eccentricity. The word eccentric is from Greek astronomy; it describes a celestial object whose movements aren’t centered around the earth. The ancient Greeks saw the planets moving through the sky with no apparent direction and called them “wandering stars” (asteres planetai).

October 2009
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Vertigo

My vertigo came on suddenly. It was past midnight, and I was listening to Coltrane for Lovers and doing the dishes when I began to wobble.

June 2009
What Do You Think? Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We'd love to hear about it. Send Us A Letter