The feeling comes over me every so often, like a wave. It can happen several times in a week, or once every several weeks. I can even go weeks and months without thinking about it at all. But eventually, it will find me, at the strangest, most inopportune time, unexpectedly…
The Not So Great Outdoors
When I think of my favorite writers, I don’t spend a lot of time imagining them outside. Some of my favorite writers, and comedians, seem to be more of what Jim Gaffigan calls “indoorsy.” I think of David Sedaris, Calvin Trillin, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Bryson, Malcolm Gladwell, and Anne Lamott…
The Magic Of Failure
The dictionary defines magic as “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.” I think of writing as a kind of magic. A collection of charms, spells, incantations and rites that I’ve been developing since I discovered the power of language and realized it could used as a…
Love Is The Answer
In the movie A Beautiful Mind, John Nash gives his Noble Prize speech and explains that despite all his mathematical searching, and throughout his struggle mental illness, it was love that made life worth living. Love was the answer to the question. “I’ve always believed in numbers,” he says,…
Going Flat Out
People are said to have talents, by which we mean something you are gifted with at birth and which you did not earn. Whereas a skill is something you hone over time, through hard work and determination. Aptitude might be considered the possibility that your talent, if honed, could become…
Teach Your Children Well
The problem I have with the elf on your shelf is that it is a blatant attempt to teach children to be good, when I think the central message of Christianity, and therefore presumably the message of Christmas, is to be kind. Be kind. That’s the message of love that…
New Year’s Allocutions
I have never been all that enthusiastic on traditional New Year’s resolutions, by which I mean I have never once in my life resolved to do anything particularly new or different just because the calendar flipped from one year to the next. I do not like being told what to…
Where The Shadows Play
I’ve always enjoyed Anne Lamott—ever since that summer day when I discovered her in a tiny, gay bookstore in Cape May, New Jersey, and then sat in the park, on a bench, and read these little stories, and laughed and cried and wondered at life, while waiting for my girlfriend…
What’s The Frequency Kenneth?
The late, great Louis CK (he’s not dead yet, but I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about him yet after he admitted to masturbating in front of people that were apparently not into this social abnormality). Anyway, Louis had this bit about how unappreciative we are concerning how…
The Prince’s Bad Day
The great thing about the English language is its ability to adapt and evolve over time, incorporating all manner of words and phrases, whether invented or borrowed, and even changing definitions, spelling, uses, and meaning over time to fit the culture. People get upset by this, but that’s the entire…