drmstream[writing]

  –I’ve got to make a polit­i­cal car­toon, the sixth-grade boy says to me.  I’m going down­stairs. I’m fid­dling with my iPad and half-watching the end of the US Open.  I’m just happy that he didn’t rope me into work­ing on the assign­ment and that he’s going down to the play­room alone.  Some­times he gets […]

Don’t you love the com­mu­nity around your inter­ests and enthu­si­asms that you find on the web? You can’t repli­cate the expe­ri­ence any­where in real life: the vari­ety of view­points, the excite­ment of shar­ing and the feel­ing of val­i­da­tion that comes from con­sort­ing with peo­ple who see the world from the same angle but who are […]

T. and I found our­selves at Deepak Chopra’s Home­Base, a long, low space on the mez­za­nine of ABC Car­pet & Home, this Wednes­day lis­ten­ing to the guru of human poten­tial, total­ity and cen­tered­ness have a con­ver­sa­tion with Rudolph Tanzi, a Har­vard neuro-scienctist and geneti­cist, about the mys­tery of mem­ory. This was my first expo­sure to […]

  When we read a story, our brains plot every­thing that’s going on, from the character’s phys­i­cal loca­tions in space to their inter­ac­tions with objects in the envi­ron­ment to their pur­suit of var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional goals.  Many of the brain areas active while read­ing are also active when we actu­ally take part in or […]

Sit­ting in the sec­ond story of a two-story row house in Brooklyn’s South Slope, I searched for the voice that would tell my 21-year old daugh­ter Becky some­thing about liv­ing. She’s laid up with a bro­ken foot that’s keep­ing her from work­ing at the micro-distillery where she found a job after com­ing back from Louisiana, […]

The orna­ment lit up in his hand. It felt like magic. Kevin took it home & wrapped it in paper. When I get my big house, he thought. March 1, 2011 2:29 pm via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite @drmstream drm­stream This is one of a series of sto­ries that I have been telling on Twit­ter.  Each para­graph is […]

The ice forms sur­rep­ti­tiously, against all prob­a­bil­ity, when win­ter takes a river.  The pieces form inad­ver­tently, bound by the cold, and col­lide into each other, adhered by the quick­en­ing of the silky black water.  It’s like a crowd of sum­mer lilies — but it isn’t.  The pieces of ice are jagged and uneven, thick and […]

I was going through my papers and found three pages of loose notes. They must be recent, but I don’t know why I made them, whether they are my own ideas or notes jot­ted down from some­thing that I read or saw. They are orga­nized but hur­ried. They com­prise a man­i­festo of sorts. I just […]

I wrote a story once about a young man who works in a tai­lor shop.  He was lis­ten­ing to the radio.  His name was Joe Gib­son.  A pretty girl comes in and he takes her mea­sure­ments.  He presses her breast.  He’s aroused and bash­ful.  She doesn’t even seem to notice.  The song Melan­choly Baby was […]

In the 10 years since my dad died, my life has changed in ways nei­ther of us antic­i­pated. I want to turn toward new things with him today. Decem­ber 6, 2010 3:19 pm via Twit­te­la­torReplyRetweetFavorite @Kcecelia Kather­ine Cecelia This day before Christ­mas is filled with antic­i­pa­tion and uncer­tainty. The gifts are assem­bled, the rit­u­als lined […]