Rebellious eccentrics, these artists were brave in their art and, once they had to be, brave in reality. Had they been able to stay, safe and adored, in Paris, they would have remained remote to us, wrapped in mystique. In exile, they were vulnerable.
We forget to ask what our own words are bringing into existence.
All religions should make room for the grown-ups to move toward a more open, meditative, inclusive, deconstructed experience. Maybe we could even hold on to what is best about religion if each denomination stopped insisting it possessed the only truth.
The deeper problem is not the predatory trickery of planned obsolescence or the high cost of labor in the United States. and the low cost of manufacturing overseas. It is not the closure of that sweet, fusty shop or the stubbornly slow pace of the honey-do list. It is my own impatience, my terror of taking something apart and finding that this half-hour task will take me two weeks.
Tempted as I am to lavish consciousness on everything around me, I was fascinated to learn that tobacco and tomato plants click when they are stressed.
“Monk on the Run” is shaped the way Warren Rosen has lived his life: moment to moment, choosing freedom over convention, scorning practicality, following impulses. Lots of digressions, in other words, and prose that is not always linear or logical but stays vivid, a paintbox spattered with bright personalities.“
The need to flush is basic and practical, and we maybe should have taught one another better before we handed off such an intimate task. But tech addicts us, and free enterprise lives on.
Joe was grieving his friend as he wrote “Strange Fle$h,” and when he finished the book, his new pseudonym was obvious. Joe West would be a stronger name—the short, plain, masculine sound of it, and the connection to Thom.As an author, though, Joe West is stronger because he is also Joe Schwartz.
Stories only work when there is conflict—that is the common wisdom. I grew up not knowing, or I would never have chosen to write. Only later, too late, was the truism hammered into my head, and the experience was as unpleasant as that cliché suggests.
From Poland to St. Louis with dreams, back to Europe to fight, back to St. Louis to drink, and make shoes, and die. He had no idea his name would live on—let alone make generations of playgoers wince and recoil. The blame for that can be divvied up between Tennessee’s father and one of his lovers.
Posture, “the position or bearing of the body,” carries information. My slump is insecure, preoccupied, habitual. Kneeling at work was an eagerness for communion with my colleagues. Much as I roll my eyes over liturgical dance (when it is self-conscious and silly) or arms that are stagily lifted to the heavens, something does feel different—wide open and vulnerable—when your arms are lifted high, not crossed over your bosom in self-defense.
August 22 will mark the 120th anniversary of her birth—a good day, if you are a devotee, to mix a martini with Dorothy Parker American Gin (the owner of its New York Distillery exchanged Dorothy Parker vows with his bride at their wedding) or take a tour with Kevin Fitzpatrick, founder of the Dorothy Parker Society.