Taking Our Bearings To find out where we are, we gaze at the sunset, Then the moon and stars. We bring their images down to touch the sea, And there we are: there, At a certain time where straight lines intersect On a chart––that’s you and I In all this emptiness, the only two In […]
All About the Gist
God bless Natalie Angier. One of the Times’ best science writers, her topics are so, well, topical. She reassures me time and time again by stepping up and owning her mental failings—which often correspond to those I possess as well—and thereby soothing my concerns that if she can still be scintillating and bright in spite […]
Bird Flight
My clever and resourceful friend at Virgin in the Volcano sent me an extraordinary story by Andre Dubus, A Father’s Story. It is deeply memorable and haunting, and you can read it in its entirety here. As for this moment, I’ve included a few salient passages from the story that have sat with me all […]
The World Might Change
It is Marvellous to Wake up Together It is marvellous to wake up together At the same minute; marvellous to hear The rain begin suddenly all over the roof, To feel the air suddenly clear As if electricity had passed through it From a black mesh of wires in the sky. All over the roof […]
Roni Horn: Redolent, Bright, Sinister, Sexual
Roni Horn is a wonder. She is one of that select group of “large arc” artists whose works are epic and full scaled and yet they still feel personal, intimate and emotionally alive. The ironic stance and political positioning that walls off a lot of contemporary installation art for me is not present in her […]
Wing, Fin, Flake
Wind Gift For you, something not put even in prayer. Like broad wings that swim thick under your fall And won’t let you drop through the air. Or the same thing under the sea where your boat goes. A teeming companionship of life too full for a hollow —the way a canyon’s alive when it […]
Talkin’ Smart
Sharon Begley writes a column at Newsweek and can mince through a problem about as fast as anybody these days. Her mind is sharp, agile and very cool. The following excerpt is from her column in the February 14 issue and deals with the general failure of prognostication. I have been miffed by (you too?) […]
Relentless
I’ve given it a week to settle or to slink off. But it just won’t. The profile of David Foster Wallace in last week’s The New Yorker has taken a front row seat, kind of like a big and slightly smelly guy, and will not move to the back. Hats off to D. T. Max, […]
That’s Him
The newly identified portrait of William Shakespeare has been unveiled at Dartmouth House, Mayfair, London Photo: Geoff Pugh THE BARD! From the Guardian: The oil canvas is thought to have been painted in 1610 – six years before the playwright’s death – when he was about 46 years old. It remained in the same family […]
The Ones Who Have Left
Lost Friends Friends carried off by life are the most difficult to appease, the most tyrannical. Barbarians of an unknown land, they sip the poison of silence and they grow beyond all limits in the distance, a blind eye to our loneliness. And to think that we were brothers in arms, that we dug up […]