In 1962, in the context of the American-Russian space race, then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy famously proclaimed, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” I have always found these words inspirational, extolling as they do the qualities… Read more »
Lately, I have been mostly enjoying the Apple TV reality series The Reluctant Traveler, starring the great Eugene Levy, comic actor and co-creator of the sitcom Schitt’s Creek. The premise of the show is that Mr. Levy is someone who is deeply averse to new experiences, but nevertheless willing to move far beyond his comfort… Read more »
I admit it, I have no grand raison d’être, no time for minimalism, asceticism, or self-denial. I am a hedonist, through and through, a born romantic with a taste for the extravagant and the exotic. Also, something of a layabout, truth be told. We each have, at best, only a short stroll between cradle and… Read more »
Far more than just an absence of sunlight, the nighttime is a whole different country; its borders between waking and dreams notoriously porous and uncontrolled. In the cities of the night, winding backstreets are charged with strange energies and apparitions, more threatening than the daytime, but also more filled with the promise of mystery and… Read more »
I am the poisoned worm at the bottom of the mescal bottle. I am the air bubble in the bloodstream, the psychopath’s machete, the malfunctioning soviet-era satellite careening from the bright blue skies. I am as beautiful as wolfsbane, as sleek as a bullet or a blade, as crooked as a funnel cloud, as sudden… Read more »
I have been spending some time now, soaking up the incomparable charms of the Alfama district of Lisbon—the venerable, magnetic soul of this city: labyrinthine streets, with delightful surprises around every corner, music and golden light pouring out of doorways onto ancient cobblestoned alleyways. Last night, I was at a series of fado bars. For… Read more »
Sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell: they are our only means of bearing witness to and possibly gaining some understanding of the surprising pageantry of the weird world we find ourselves plunged into. This sensory input provides us with the raw ingredients which time distills, and which our mind, that arcane mixologist, stirs and crafts… Read more »
Perhaps it is the state of the world these days, or merely my inner state of mind, or some combination of the two, but lately I have been feeling adrift. More accurately, the need to be adrift. To cut myself free from the present place and time in the hopes of finding diversion, escape, maybe… Read more »
If memory serves me, it was that ignorant douchebag T.S. Eliot who once fatuously proclaimed April to be the “cruelest month.” Yeah, right. Look, I will level with you: owing to the misfortune of having made a little bit “too merry” last night, with several shakers-full of dirty martinis in celebratory anticipation of the end… Read more »
By the time you read this, Blue Monday will have come and gone. I am not naturally given to deep bouts of philosophical anguish. A simple, oblivious soul by nature, I blithely drift through most days of the calendar, beset by only minimal levels of angst. As a rule, the relentless outrages and dystopian murmurings… Read more »