-
MUSEUMS NO MORE
Travel guides always wantto send me to museums of art,of history, of culture, of science.I appreciate their guidance but Iwould prefer to spend my timevisiting zoos, looking at animalsand ignoring the placardspainfully detailing what I am seeing.I have been to countlessmuseums and while each offeredbeauty and knowledge, eachdemanded that I needed to learn,to interpret, to…
-
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…
-
FROM HERE TO THERE
It is a marvel of engineering,miniaturization taken to a new level.Once it was a pound of coffeewhere sixteen ounces became thirteenbut they knew we would growused to the new quantity afteronly a short period of complaining.That there weren’t other optionsall but guaranteed they would win.But now they’ve miniaturizedthe inside of airplanes, your seatnarrower, you knee…
-
TRAVEL THOUGHTS 13
In this age when facts and statisticsdefine reality instantlyit is comforting to knowthat if all the containerson the piers of the Port of Newarkwere laid end to endthey would still beexceedingly ugly. First published in Exquisite Corpse, No. 43, 1993
-
PRAGUE
When we walked the streetsof Prague, we felt at once alienbut surrounded by so many tourists,almost somewhat at home.Unlike in Lyon or Arles wheremy limited high school Frenchallowed me the most rudimentaryof conversations, in Pragueit was pointing or Google Translate,and then I wore the mark of touristdespite wearing clothes Ihad purchased there the day before.We…
-
ANCESTRY
It shouldn’t be so easy to forgetwhere your ancestors came from, whythey left their homes, traveled toa new place where they might not be welcomedbut took the chance for a better future or justto avoid the horrors of where they were.It is a part of your DNA, yours werethe” other” then, but yours came and…
-
ARE YOU CRAZY?
The birds look at us as though we had two heads. They cannot, they say, comprehend how we can stand to live in boxes, to travel in metal containers, to be stuck forever to the ground. They say that food should be picked then eaten instantly, not packaged and half thrown away. They say they…
-
CENTER SEAT
My friends have often wondered aloudwhy I claim to be most creative whenI am stuck on an airplane for hours. I have told them that the solitude,the lack of It is an interesting quirkof the internet, that birthand death are disconnected. Seeking out those born todayI found a long list, the dinosauramong which is Judy…
-
CITIZEN OF . . .
There was a time that nowseems so very long ago, when Iwould freely admit, sometimes claimto be American, if not acknowledgingmy time in the Air Force as well. Those days are gone, as is the placeI knew, now morphed into somewheremuch the same, and entirely unrecognizable,and I am American by proximity, knowingmy welcome has been…
-
MORNING
It is late morning and with five hours sleep I am renting my fourth cup of coffee I look forward to night.
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 