The pencil sat in the center of a piece of white paper divided into four squares: two of the squares held the word YES, two of the squares held the word NO. “You just balance the pencil on the other pencil crossways,” said Em. El set one pencil on top of the other, as her sister had asked. When the pencil tilted and the eraser touched the paper, Em snatched it up. “No, it’s gotta balance!” she said. “Why?” “So Charlie can...

A little over 45 years ago, I lived in the storefront of a former pickle factory about 20 blocks from where Renee Good was shot and killed. I’m sure the neighborhood has changed drastically since I lived there, but when I see the old housing stock and hard-working residents of the Powderhorn neighborhood, I’m reminded of my time there. There were not clouds of tear-gas hanging in the air back then, or pepper ball stains i...

One year, in the early 1990s, a group of us working for NBC Election Unit somehow managed to get a permit to play softball in Central Park. Tough permit to get, and we were stupidly lucky to get it. Anybody who wanted could play; you didn’t have to work for NBC. It was a pretty rag-tag team. In addition, it was the last slot on Sunday night, which meant that we got to play late, until it started to get dark. Fun games. Fu...

"Doom! Doom! Doom! Something seems to whisper it in the very dark trees of America." - D.H. Lawrence (in his essay on Moby Dick) I spent this summer reading Moby Dick, while I was taking care of my daughter as she recovered from surgery. I have some thoughts. Do not expect a review or anything resembling literary criticism. I don’t think you need to have read the book. When I was a kid, I got a picture book of Moby Dick f...

My next door neighbor used to greet the sun every morning. On summer mornings, I’d see him out on the front lawn of his house, doing this thing with his arms where he looked like he was embracing the sunlight and pulling the sun’s energy into his own body. He’s a sun worshipper. He’s told me this. He’s older than me, but not by much, and more fit. Long floppy gray hair, thin as a rail-post, all the energy in the world, in...

ESA only sent married couples into space for these kinds of missions. Something about for better or for worse. Something about ‘til death do us part. We held the fate of the Earth in our hands. Our vow was not only to each other but to humankind as well. Paz and I traveled 91 million miles to get here, so far from Earth that it took eight minutes for a radio signal to reach there. We were suspended a ridiculous 315 miles...

True story: an entire double rainbow has graced our sky for the last two nights in a row. What a potent feeling, to walk out into the street, light rain peppering my hair (or what hair remains, anyway), tickling my scalp I have my phone in hand, ready to take a picture, maybe post it somewhere, Facetok, Instabook, Tikgram. And then I see what I am doing, and pause I don’t need a phone to look at the sky All I need are eye...

I decided to take a bus for the last section of the journey. I knew that traffic in the New York City area would be crazed, and no place to try to hitch a ride. I’d had excellent luck hitching so far, perhaps due to the protection of Mishipeshu the cat/dragon, but I was no longer within his sphere of influence. Maybe it was the time to stop tempting fate. I’d heard of New Paltz and knew it was fairly close to New York Cit...

My rides dried up. I’d had pretty good hitching luck up to then, with only a few long stretches of waiting for cars. Now, the situation had changed. I had a big bloody scabby bruise on the side of my face, right up against my nose. It did not seem to be engendering a lot of trust in me with the many cars passing me by. I wasn’t feeling too mythic. It didn’t help that I’d left the comfort of the Trans-Canadian Highway, tra...

I must have been lonely. I have a distinct memory of sitting in a park, in where I think is Sudbury, Ontario, my back against the trunk of a large tree, listening to Bruce Springsteen. Specifically, I was listening to the end of “I’m on Fire” off Springsteen’s Born in the USA, and marveling at the plaintive high lonesome “woo-hoo-ooo” trailing off, as the narrator of the song expresses his longing for the girl, his desire...

Writing that last bit has made me wonder how I handled my cigarette habit, which at the time was a pack a day. I was between towns for days at a time, how would I even buy them? I distinctly remember, mid-trip, buying a pack of Canadian cigarettes, and being shocked at how expensive they were, which tells me I wasn’t walking into town for smokes every night. I suddenly remember that before I left Minneapolis to begin the...

I met some nice folks at the State Park. An older couple (probably about the age I am now) staying in an RV in the next camping spot over shared some of their breakfast with me, and wished me luck. I walked out onto the highway. I got a ride right up to the Canadian border early the next morning. He stopped before we got there. “You aren’t carrying drugs or anything,” he asked me. “No, I promise.” I was being truthful. “O...

Despite the ignominious ending of my previous trip, I was determined to try it again, with a few key differences. One: Note that my Dad was leaving me on the shoulder of I-90, not I-35. I was heading north, not east. I had decided to hitchhike to New York City via Canada, swinging over the top of the Great Lakes before dropping down into the US near Champlain. Two: I would be travelling alone. Three: This was a one-way tr...

My dad dropped me off on the shoulder of an entrance ramp to I-90 on a sunny summer day in 1984 (hitchhiking on the Interstate is illegal, but it’s legal to stick your thumb out for a ride if you do it on the entrance ramp). I slid my oversized, kind-of-goofy yellow backpack out of the back seat of the family VW Rabbit and stuck out my thumb. I wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a hospital scrubs shirt. My hair was cut newly s...

I fall easily in love with the pretty eyes of dental assistants. It’s mostly what I see as I lay back in the chair. The grinding drone of drills and clamps and cutting tools surrounds me. The assistants wear masks; I cannot see their noses, their mouths. So I look in their eyes without the context of a face as they work on my teeth, fingers in my mouth, oblivious to my observations. They stay behind me when not working on...