The Art of Sauntering
So often we walk at someone else’s pace, keeping up with a companion’s long strides or the pedestrians jostling alongside us. Sauntering requires a deliberate aimlessness, an ease.
Dispatches
Nomad: Werner Herzog’s Tribute to Bruce Chatwin
A screenshot from ‘Nomad,’ distributed by Music Box Films.
The film Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin was shown at Tribeca and Telluride, and on the BBC, in 2019, but it is just now available in the US, on several platforms. The film is a documentary on…
A Delicate Constitution
The theme is coming clear: Principle is sacrificed in order to either amass money or protect money. But what about the tortuous pursuit of equality and justice in the United States? On the surface, that does not fit the pattern.
What It Would Be Like to No Longer Live in a Democracy?
If a police officer or a soldier came into view, our first impulse would be to step into the shadows. If light glared, we would keep our heads down. If we got arrested for insubordination or treason or somehow thwarting the State, we could try to plead our case in court and might even prevail—as long as the judges were nonpartisan, detached from any political agenda.
About Veterans Day
Imagine if some of us were in our cups—let’s say we had a day off and a backyard big enough to social-distance—and the topic turned to military service. I guarantee that long before we reached the dregs, veritas would come spilling out: We have very different ideas on what “service” means.…
Is a Play on Zoom Still Theater?
On screen, even something happening in real time does not feel live. When does a piece stop being theater and become film, I wonder.
Necessary Comfort
Misery may love company, but it adores relief. Hope of relief is what the miserable live for.
A hot meal for troops in the field is not strictly necessary, any more than hot showers. Only calories count, and packaged cold rations provide them. But a hot breakfast is a psychological…
The World Is Still Wobbling
In everyday life, zozobra just means anxiety. But Emilio Uranga went deeper, exploring the sense of destabilization Mexicans have had for far longer than we have. Zozobra meant wobbling between two perspectives, unable ever to land.
“This Getting Older, It Ain’t for Cowards”
When we are young, we talk with greatest feeling about our dreams for the future. The adventure of old age is staying alive just a little bit longer, and the great battle is with one’s own mind and body. Old people are fighting nonstop, even as they sit in sunrooms or knit with seeming contentment.
The Why I Oughtas
Outside Donald Trump’s St. Louis Campaign Headquarters, election night.
It has been a week. Anything else anybody wants to announce? We could all use a break.
My sons and I were out and about during election week, to bear witness to the historically significant, should it occur. But…