Poetry

I remember phrases from childhood travels, not images or events. Glass-bottomed boat. Lion Country Safari. Circus Circus. The musicality of the words meant more to me than the actual experiences. All I remember about the glass-bottomed boat was my incredulousness. How could a boat have a glass bottom? I pictured a little motorboat with a […]

Whodunnit

It doesn’t matter who you are until it matters a lot. It doesn’t matter who that guy is until he’s Barack Obama. I saw an exhibit of paintings of Shakespeare. Without Shakespeare, I don’t know that I would be three dimensional, or require food and water. I know a lot of people feel that way. […]

Critical Mass

Not to get too meta on you (but I think meta is very over, and I find it soothing to remain passe), I wrote a bit of criticism recently, and I’m going to criticize the whole notion of criticism. First: I don’t know that I believe in criticism. I don’t know if I believe in […]

Fetishes: Annotated Bibliography

“The French have a horror of the smell of cooking food, whereas Americans find it appetizing; in the nineteenth century the first French Rothschild went so far in this aversion as to have the food brought from the kitchen to the dining room on an odourless, because underground, train.” –Edmund White, The Flaneur (I couldn’t […]