In The Bare Room Under The Old

We Talk About Politicians Being In Public Life, But They Seldom Appear In The Public Space Where Everyone Is Free To Appear As A Citizen.

If Sorrow And Beauty Are All Tied Up Together, Then Perhaps Maturity Brings With It Not What Nabhan Calls Abstraction, But An Aesthetic Sense That Partially Redeems The Losses Time Brings And Finds Beauty In The Faraway.

No One Is Born A Writer; Literacy Is A Peculiar Mode Of Being, But I Was All About Stories From A Very Early Age, Before Reading.

I Think That Fear Of The Mob, The Expectation That People, Particularly Poor And Nonwhite People Become Mobs Almost Automatically In The Absence Of Coercive Authority, Is Inculcated By The Media, The Movies, And Politicians.

The Language Of Commerce Has Been Engineered To Describe The Overt Purpose Of A Thing, But Cannot Encompass Fringe Benefits Or Peripheral Pleasures. It Weighs The Obvious Against What In Its Terms Are Incomprehensible. When I Drive From Here To There, Speed, Privacy, Control, And Safety Are Easy To Claim. When I Walk, What Happens Is More Vague, More Ambiguous-and In Many Circumstances Much Richer. I Am Out In The World. It's Exercise, Though Not So Quantifiably As On A Treadmill In A Gym With A Digital Readout.