It’s time to stop pretending like the person married to the President of the United States is a de facto housewife in charge of place settings, guest lists, and curtains, or a woman of leisure in need of a hobby. Let’s do it while the President’s spouse is still a…
The Idea Of Things
What do we do when we lose interest in the thrill of tomorrow? When we can’t think of anything else to do to keep ourselves from going mad? Some people live for tomorrow. Their happiness is almost entirely wrapped up in what promise the future holds. Others are content to…
I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Culture War
As America remains hopelessly polarized in its endless culture war, it has become abundantly clear that there is little personal advantage in taking sides, as there is nothing to win here. There was a time when mankind believed wars could be won. Two armies would meet on a battlefield, and…
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
There is a downside to allowing your world to grow small, but it’s not what you think it is. You can maintain a limited existence even while searching far and wide. You can explore the world while living inside a prison cell that measures eight inches across from ear to…
What’s So Funny About Peace, Love And Understanding?
When we are young, we look forward to holidays with unbridled excitement because they are so full of possibility. But as we age, we turn our attention to the past, to memories of a life already spent. We wax poetic about ancient meals, and conversations with people no longer living.…
Magical Thinking In America: Taco Trucks, Drag Queens, Baseball And Love
An experimental exercise in ideas and language. When you buy a ticket to the circus, you expect to see some crazy shit, but what you don’t expect is for the circus to burst into your living room and start getting it on right in front of you. There is nothing…
My Fighting Weight In Scarves
I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to a point where I think I look better unclothed than I do clothed. For all intents and purposes that ship has sailed and probably didn’t set off anytime recently either. It was probably somewhere around my mid-twenties and even then I…
Daylight Fading
Autumn is a smell: woodsmoke, decaying leaves, and cinnamon. It’s a color palette too: oranges, reds, and browns. The color of the earth on fire. The air has an entirely different quality, with a crisp snap in your nose and the way the low light glows now rather than shimmers,…
Ahhh, That’s Better
It’s a story that’s been told and told again in our family. I think we tell it because it so accurately reflects who we are as a people in a way that trying to describe our little clan could never do. It’s a symbol of our love, arrogance, ego and…
I Don’t Have To Understand Jazz
“Jazz is rhythm and meaning.” — Henri Matisse The French painter Henri Matisse once said, “I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” This is how I feel when I try to understand jazz, and to be clear, I do not understand jazz. This is not to…