Monet’s Summer

I stand before a summer day. Softer, warmer, brighter than the day I’m in. Monet’s vertical canvas, the object of my looking, dissolves, and I am left in space itself. Nature can be this for the mind, a tabula rasa. Hm… I’m not frightened by the vastness, the entrance is not a jolt or a

Knead & Other Selections

Knead… the earth with rain, and let it fain the glaring lips  of the sun. Knead the earth. Pour your mortar among molded bricks and molten sand. Knead the earth, and erect your dwellings high. For like the shrub pierces the womb and sprouts from the face of Mother, you, too, shall wreak ruin. Reign

A Completely Precedented Goodbye For Unprecedented Times

I received an email from The New York Review of Books, though I do not remember signing up for their mailing list, advertising gifts for the Class of 2020. Enclosed in the email was a catalogue of thin silver bracelets with quotes from famous authors. The advertisement’s featured bracelet had a quote from Thoreau in a handwriting-like font that said: “Go confidently in the / direction of your dreams— / Live the life you’ve imagined.” I will not be buying one of these silver bracelets, nor have I learned, these past few months, how to bake sourdough.

Metaphysics y mi condena

Metaphysics. I’d heard this word a few times before, just thrown out there, into a sea of conversation. Thrown out with or without meaning. Thrown out to impress or just to say something that doesn’t sound so trivial, thrown out even because it goes well with physics,