I must have dozed for a few minutes. A dream rushed by the threshold of my consciousness, making a gentle noise. Death was in the dream. He drove a black Cadillac loaded with flowers. When I woke up, the cigarette was starting to burn my fingers. A thin man in a gray flannel shirt was [...]
As dusk falls, the lights on the rides illuminate and silence seeps into the day. The waves are low. The moon sits high in the sky, aloof but comfortable. The night gains momentum on the boardwalk. You sit on the beach and plunge your hands deep in the sand. The surface is cool. Just below, [...]
1857 lithograph by Armand Gautier, showing personifications of dementia, megalomania, acute mania, melancholia, idiocy, hallucination, erotic mania and paralysis in the gardens of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière. In an attempt to catalog madness, the artist has created a zoo exhibit for lunacy. They are curious objects, these women who have lost their mind with [...]
Each place you go, don’t look for the thing that is different. Look for the thing that is the same. That is your starting point, the anchor. I can share the experience. We aren’t alone. But we can’t find each other inside all the noise. We have to look out into the quiet, strip the [...]
When you felt the red fire Of the forge, as it played, Did you feel, Too, my swordsman’s desire Run like blood on your blade And blue steel? A wonderful set of broadsides from turn of the century Ireland, illustrated by the artist Jack B. Yeats. Each edition was just 300 copies. Art speaks to [...]
An old tree came down at the edge of the property in a windstorm. It sat below the cottage at the edge of the farm road. The base was massive and marred with water bumps, knocks and scars. Time had thinned out the top, making it appear foreshortened against the sky. The trunks and branches [...]
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift This sketch is easy to pass over. It doesn’t conform to our standards of baby memorabilia…of photographs in a little brag book or on our digital phone, moments of “look here,” “isn’t that cute,” “ooh” and “ahh.” The sketch is an afterthought, [...]
By the beginning of the 20th Century, Brooklyn’s die was cast. A thriving sub-metropolis, annexed to one of the greatest cities in the world, its nexus gravitating inexorably to the three grand bridges that connect it to Manhattan. Brooklyn was a staging point. Ships carried goods into its protected harbors. Produce came in each day [...]
My Dragon One day as I was walking I passed a secret cave carved in a mountain face, so I decided to go in. Inside the cave I heard a roar. I got a little scared but I kept going. Now I could see something red. I wanted to run back but I was too [...]
A human being is part of a whole…[but] he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest…This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison [...]