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Writing
Baton Rouge
It was hot and I wanted to die, in a way. I was tired of being twenty-five years old and festering as an undergraduate at one of the largest cow colleges in the deep South.
July 2008
Confessions Of A B-Movie Zombie
One night I read a short, autobiographical story about how difficult it was being a B-movie zombie. Afterward a few people I didn’t know came over to my table, the most interesting of whom was an attractive teenager who appeared to be part Asian. Though it was winter, she wore a short skirt and sat with her knees together, hands in her lap, and gazed at me.
March 2008
Fame And Fortune
A case of teapot-sized tea bags, an autographed cocoa-splattered napkin, blackberries mingling with wild roses along the fence
January 2008
The Wizard In The Closet
To Jerry, everything was potentially interesting. When parents say, “Pay attention,” they mean, “Know in advance when danger will occur” — which, of course, is impossible. But Jerry showed me how to pay attention; how to look and then say what I had seen, precisely, accurately, truly. Jerry embodied attentiveness. His gift to his students was to pass on this process of attending to the world.
December 2007
Before She Sends It
I dreamt that I was in London, offering my business card to English women in exchange for a hug. They seemed pleased to hug an American; I was satisfied with the arrangement, too. Then I met a woman who was visiting from North Carolina. I didn’t come all this way to hug someone from North Carolina, I thought. But I gave her my card, too.
December 2007The Whiskey Robe
On the screened-in porch of my in-laws’ house in central Massachusetts, I am reading a book. Sipping from the tumbler in my hand helps fight the unseasonable chill in the June air. The ice cubes are shrinking, diluting the alcohol, and clinking every time I raise the glass to my lips.
December 2007
October 2007
If I sit here waiting for the perfect sentence to show up, I’ve got a long wait ahead of me. Maybe the perfect sentence doesn’t want me to wait. Maybe the perfect sentence is tired of one-night stands with writers who fall in love too easily, who can’t be trusted to stick around when the perfect sentence turns out to be not so perfect after all.
October 2007
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