1. I preach to my kids: write every day. I should stop there and clarify that sentence. Because I don’t exactly have kids. I am a professor. I have students. But they are mine. At least for 17 weeks each semester. My job is to help them find the tools they need to go live […]
Sometimes I float. I couldn’t tell you exactly what brings upon these moods in my life anymore than I could tell you when I’m anchored down. Surely there are ideas, tiny thoughts that bounce around in my brain. Dissecting. Always dissecting. The eternal search for that One Thing that will make it all clear. That […]
**Greetings Gawkers who found me through this piece or this piece. Remember to tip your waiters and waitresses. And the 1030 show is always different than that the 8.** I have buried the lede in this piece so I hope you’ll hang with me while I indulge in a little storytelling about why I’m a […]
Prologue. Curveball. The last time I held a baseball bat, with any seriousness, was May 1990. I remember because of what I didn’t do. I remember because years of my life came to focus in that one at bat, that one moment where I expected to succeed in ways that I had succeed before. I […]
1. The first movie I obsessed over, in the kind of way that can only be felt by the young, was Pump Up the Volume. It was the summer after my freshman year at Miami University. I was sober for the first time. I was home in my parents condominium, a place they bought not […]
1. The average lifespan of a white American male is 78 years old. I am 37 right now, which means I’m screaming towards middle-age. The halfway point. You know, if I’m lucky. It’s been a rocky road, though, so I don’t expect that I’ll get to live out that average. Not because I’m a fatalist. […]
General Butler State Park. This is my writing refuge. The place I go where there is no other place for me to go. The chaotic swirls of my life don’t find their way here. I am not sure why. I do not question these places. And yet I don’t always trust the quiet solitude. I […]
The night sometimes wraps itself around me. There’s an oddness to it that I can’t quite explain. Emptiness and hollow, a long, dark hallway. I think it’s way I don’t slow down. Or rarely slow down. Like a child who sprints up the stairs after flipping the light switch, desperately trying to beat the blackness. […]
There’s been only a very short period in my life when I’ve enjoyed flying. And enjoyed was probably not what it was. Probably fatigue, a soured relationship that exists near the back edge between the first months’ bliss and the final months’ disgusted disinterest. The area of empty casualness. My life in Berkeley involved flying. […]
Hello Students: You have all heard me discuss David Foster Wallace numerous times throughout the semester (including the class-opening essay, which I still encourage you to read). This will likely not stop during the last 8 weeks. I’d apologize, but since I’m not going to stop, it seems disingenuous to do so. However, of all […]