The air Tuesday morning was like a hot towel, eighty and climbing at 6:30, when I took the dog and the baby on our neighborhood loop. By mid-afternoon, when I returned to our apartment with two bags full of the random and banal and occasionally poignant accumulations of office life, the bruise in the sky […]
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How to Love New York: The Staten Island Pizza Rats
Well those are four words I never expected to string together, and certainly not in an homage to this city. (More homages here and here.) I’ve realized that many of the parts of New York I love most are the ones that make it feel small and knowable. I don’t know if it’s the unexpectedness […]
Ándale, Joto, Your Popsicle’s Melting, or Is Mechanical Reproduction Better than No Production at All?
Reality was the theme of English class my junior year of high school. Organic reality versus manufactured reality versus hyperreality. Is something real because you’ve experienced it? Because it looks/feels/smells/tastes just like that other thing, the one you know is real? Is it real because the New York Times said so? Because Brietbart said so? […]
Is Motherhood a Tattoo or a Shadow on the Sand: Some Thoughts on Identity in the Novel Outline
I just finished Rachel Cusk’s Outline, and I’m thinking, again, about motherhood. Or rather, the role of the mother. Or rather, roles. The roles of Outline’s narrator include: mother, ex-wife, writer. It is in that last capacity that she, an Englishwoman, has come to Athens, to spend a few weeks teaching a writing class, in […]
Taking Me in Increments, or How I Spent My Maternity Leave
I go back to work this coming Monday, and no one would be more surprised than the me of three months ago to learn that I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT IT. On the one hand, my movements and (part of?) my mind will less tethered. On the other, Per is curiouser and curiouser, as free […]
She’s Come Undone
A few weeks ago, I finally made it to David Bowie Is, at the Brooklyn Museum (the first time I tried to go, the Saturday after it opened, there was a five! hour! wait! (not ideal when you’re carting around a baby)). The exhibit is a full-stop audio-visual spectacle, part documentary, part concert, part bohemian […]
A Letter to the Woman Who Taught Me to Keep Writing
I love Man Repeller‘s monthly Writers Club prompts — they’re a good exercise even when I don’t come up with anything worth sending in. Last month’s was a fan letter; I addressed mine to Shirley Jackson (whose ability to write in her head continues to amaze and inspire me). Dear Shirley Jackson, I first read the […]
