The Eastern seaboard is never dark – a skein of lights runs along it, always visible. Islands of dark rather than islands of light.Airports–as well as railway stations–are always somewhat erotic to me. I think because they are a liminal space, and they contain the potential for a kind of casual intimacy, or, as Sondheim …
A cold New York night. December. The line snaked city blocks. Feet cold. Bodies bushing and the smell of naked greed permeates the air: West 14th Street Apple Store Opening, December 7, 2007 The odds (percentages? probabilities? I’m a little fuzzy on the differences between the terms) were good to win something expensive like a …
I recently finished Wyn Wachhorst’s The Dream of Spaceflight, a series of essays about the history and meaning of–and desire for–space. There are a number of quotes in the book that perfectly expressed my own feelings about space and space exploration (whether that exploration is actual or virtual). Wonder, in its larger sense, denotes the …
From yesterday’s NY Times: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually …
Is it just me or is the retail experience in large stores getting worse and worse? I was in Target & Best Buy today and just found myself annoyed by the entire process – the staff seemed bored and annoyed, they seemed poorly stocked compared to the variety I am used to online, the technology …
It’s a Brechtian thing, but as I was writing a story, I realized that I have a habit of noting when characters do not say or do something. If every decision we make is, in one sense at least, a negation of all the other possibilities we might have chosen, how do you represent this …
I feel very uncomfortable in crowds, particularly political crowds. Somewhere in the back of my brain a warning starts flashing, something to do with sameness, mob mentality, the overwhelming loss of individuality. Heck, I don’t even like seeing Rocky Horror Picture Show live because having a group of people all performing the same actions, saying …
I came to this blog topic through the Feministing website, and after reading Jill’s story as well as glancing through some of the threads on AutoAdmit, I find myself interested in raising a few points about masculinity and its fragility as a psychological construct. This is not an attempt to displace the conversation–Masculinity Studies does …
WIND SHEAR, a sudden, drastic change in wind direction or speed over a comparatively short distance. Most winds travel horizontally, as does most wind shear, but under certain conditions, including thunderstorms and strong frontal systems, wind shear will travel in a vertical direction. Microburst wind shear is an extremely violent downward blast of air that …
When I was a boy, I was scared of heights. I would get this swirling, heavy feeling in my stomach when up high, and I knew, just knew, that I was going to fall. So I would force myself to climb trees. As high as I could, ignoring the fast beating of my heart, the …