• OMOTESANDO

    When I would visit TokyoI often went to Shibuya where,on the second floor of an old buildingon Omotesando, a block printmerchant shared space withsouvenir vendors and artists.I would pick out prints that werereasonably priced, imagingfor a moment the were by Hokusaior Hiroshige, although I knew whatthey would cost if I could find them.Still, I’d carefully…


  • APP-LICATION DENIED

    I can still recall my grandmother saying,whenever she thought I should be outsiderather than sitting in my room with a book,that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jewsdid not believe in the devil and that,in any event my hands were engagedin holding the book and turning pages.I…


  • TODAY, ALAS

    Too much of what passes for literature in these days is really no more lasting than the evanescent pixels from which it is created. Books fade, pages crumble to dust but that requires the passage of time that our electronic world avoids or simply refuses to acknowledge, for history is something that lives in storage,…


  • DREAM

    She took the flower, placed it gently, arranged just so, between the pages of the giant tome, and closed the book setting it carefully back on the shelf where it would remain until someone, seeing its leathered spine might pull it out, blow off the dust and open to that page, and look into her…