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Privacy
For The Man Upstairs
Without hesitating, I carried the pie out into the hallway, and climbed the flight of stairs to the third floor, where I knocked boldly on the man’s door. Not a sound from inside. I breathed deeply; the air seemed thinner up here. While I waited, I examined the way the purple syrup had bubbled over the browned pastry. After a minute I set the pie down before the threshold and turned to leave.
June 1998Denial
How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. The public was told that old Dresden was bombed to destroy strategic railway lines. There were no railway lines in that part of the city. But it would be years before that story came to the surface.
October 1994The God Of My Childhood
Killing God; discovering orgasms; feeling connected by a giant, invisible web linking all things
July 1991A Few Lessons They Won’t Forget
The Disgrace Of Modern Schooling
While teaching means different things in different places, seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. I intend no irony here. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach.
May 1991The Ethics Of Photography
An Interview With John Rosenthal
It’s hard not to see that a photograph is an act of aggression, no matter who is taking it. You’re stopping people from the flow of their lives, you’re cropping them from the space in which they live and have their being, you’re juxtaposing them with something that they didn’t know they were next to.
January 1990Secrets
A lemon meringue pie, a little model of a dinosaur, a 31-inch Hillerich & Bradsby baseball bat
September 1987
