The other day I walked through the rain to my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, where I would get a card to make this move official. Until you have a library card you can pretend you’re off the grid, but my gypsy days are over because I borrowed a spy film and a [...]
Category > Local news
It’s weird to see a cemetery through a Starbucks window
I’m at a Starbucks in Charlottesville and from where I’m sitting by the window I can clearly see the cemetery across the highway. Which is pretty weird, right? From this angle it looks as though all the cars exiting the shopping center are driving straight into the graveyard, maybe because the passengers just bought some [...]
Beforehand
I want to write about the hand I saw in the subway car, how I was sitting in the corner of the train and the five fingers crept around the mirrored surface of the car in an odd, backward way. I remember that the nails were wide and the fingers themselves were thick and sturdy [...]
Notes from the margins of the NYC literary world
This August I have been traipsing all over Manhattan with the intention of touching famous writers in person. Here is a quick summary: 1) Richard Russo and Pat Conroy at Barnes & Noble. I didn’t have a seat which made me nervous about fainting from excitement and having to sweat it out on the floor [...]
In which I finally leave the apartment
Like a sea cucumber leaving her burrow, today I ventured out of the New York City apartment I’ve been holed up in for a week. I walked to SoHo under the auspices of a lunch date, but I really wanted to check out Hollister, the Broadway shopping mecca staffed almost entirely by Chippendale dancers. My [...]
The new, gregarious me
It has recently come to my attention that I am no longer shy. I say this because in the past week I have made friends with a cable guy from Algeria, a chocolate shop owner from Iran, a grad student in business at Vanderbilt, a couple chefs, a painter from Croatia, a West Side boy [...]
Uphill NYC
She enters the city going the wrong way down a one-way street. Rush hour in the rain, driving past the Empire State Building in a 14-foot U-Haul, herds of black umbrellas bobbing across the road. Nature seems upside down. The real world is overhead where the buildings crest. She walks a trench at the bottom [...]
Three local YouTubes
The cutest: The most unlike Eminem/the most related to me by blood: The most full of friends and babies I know:
Alaska travelogue. Don’t read if you don’t like travelogues. I just have to get these feelings out.
It occurs to me that my last post was sort of doom and gloom and that you may be wondering if I made it to Alaska and back. I did! Thanks a lot for asking. I also fell in love with the place, much like my taxi driver to the Juneau “International” Airport (they have [...]
What the new Urban Outfitters store can do for Charlottesville
It can say a big “fuck you” to the big-city Urban Outfitters franchises with their condescending employees. It can prove that salespeople can be both nice and have dyed hair/tattoos/neon leggings. It can say, “Despite our hip national status, we are still going to integrate into Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall culture by being hospitable and unpretentious. [...]
