One Saturday last spring I got up early to join my friends for a yoga lesson at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. This is a totally lovely museum, and nothing that transpired was in any way the museum’s fault. The night before yoga, I’d attended a peer workshop where I hadn’t been assertive enough and my […]
Words From The Other Side
Glass Boys
I’m an old man now, but I was a boy once, and I saw things—adults with backward rollercoaster eyes, muddy backhoe faces, steel wool fingers, javelin forearms that could tack anything they wanted to a wall, a floorboard, a bed board, or a rusty bedspring creaking for rescue. I was a glass boy then, blown […]
Red Square, a Cookie, and Bukowski
Out the window spreads the neighborhood where Behemoth wandered. From this vantage point above I witness nightfall across Patriarch Ponds. Sunlight is gradually replaced by the street lamps, twinkling candles on cafe verandas, and the dim glow of cigarettes. This cozy neighborhood is as much Russian as it is European, if not for the Cyrillic signage […]
The Thing About Clowns
A long time ago, I had an imaginary friend who was a clown. Then he shape-shifted into a ghost, then into my parents, then into a gaggle of coiled cobras that happened to look and act a lot like my parents. But first he was a clown. His makeup ran and his tongue tended to […]
My Correspondence with Publix over Endorsing Adam Putnam
Dear CEO Todd Jones, I am a second generation Floridian. I am 60 years old. I’ve been shopping at Publix my entire life. Publix is by far the closest grocery store to my house, but I won’t go there again as long as Publix is supporting Adam Putnam as a candidate. He has stated that he […]
The Life of a Nimble Cruiser
I’ve lived in LA for as long as the year is old, minus one day, and I’ve loved almost every second of it. Per another cliche, I was spending a lot of time inside vehicles. And although biking may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the Big Orange […]
