What, precisely, do I own?
Category Archives: New writing
A Question About The Past, In Search Of The Future
Learning is the most marvelous, wondrous thing that the machine you have does, and it is the terrible price that it is extracting from you.
Kill the Dog
What we can not account for, is the dog.
On Home: Letter to Alexis, a German friend, June 2020
Dear Alexis, Well, as it turned out, I owed you a letter about home anyway! So let us talk home and house and heimat und die unheimlich. When I was a boy I read a wonderful children’s book called the Big Orange Splot, by Daniel Pinkwater, in which Mr. Plumbean lives in a beautiful houseContinue reading “On Home: Letter to Alexis, a German friend, June 2020”
On Jews, Looting, and Whiteness
As the George Floyd protests spread across the country and the world, my social media flooded with protest news, infographics about police brutality, and calls for solidarity. But there was a note of hesitation, primarily from older white Jews, uncles and bubbes and synagogue friends, commenting on my friends’ posts. They wanted to support theContinue reading “On Jews, Looting, and Whiteness”
Amy Cooper in the Ramble
Currently on twitter, and maybe elsewhere, a video is circulating of a white woman named Amy Cooper. Cooper was walking her dog without a leash in the Ramble in Central Park, when a Black man named Christian Cooper approached her to ask her to leash her dog. At this point, according to Christian Cooper andContinue reading “Amy Cooper in the Ramble”
Coney Island and Washington Heights, circa 2015
Sometimes the waves are history, sometimes the waves are money.
Our Plague Year: Dreamland
The diseased world turned, and we were getting on with life. But then the dreams started.
Pharaoh
He is, in every sense, his own cat. In what sense is he “my cat”?
Our Plague Year: How we keep busy, how we keep going and the ones we are losing
They say we live in extraordinary times and should keep notes. They say we will be valuable to historians. It’s nice to think of value returning to us, as we stay home to avoid the virus, as we pace our cages, as we rot. So here’s my effort. I wake up at 11 AM andContinue reading “Our Plague Year: How we keep busy, how we keep going and the ones we are losing”
