Just as from “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” They made the many laws of kashrut, But the kid is forgotten, the milk is forgotten, and the mother is forgotten, So from “I love you” We … Continue reading →
25th Birthday
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It’s my 25th birthday & I’m out for a run along the beach of Half Moon Bay, California. Evening’s descended, the sky still hungover from the afternoon rain, the waves lumbering to their own indecipherable meter. My leg strikes the … Continue reading →
The Conversation At the End of Conversation
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The conversation at the end of conversation is a form of poetry. Con-verse-ation: Poetry spoken in company. I’m relieved to find poetry here, in part because I’m never sure when or where it exists elsewhere. How often do we find … Continue reading →
24th Birthday
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Begin in a vacuum. Or: Approximate to the wasteland six miles below you: Alaskan oceans, a picket of waterlogged air, some volcanic landmass, dark and nameless. Or, barring that: Approximate to where you are, an airplane cabin in transpacific flight … Continue reading →
Living in Truth
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It is perhaps unsurprising that Chinese liberals today find such resonance in the writings of Eastern European thinkers such as Vaclav Havel, Jan Patoçka, and Adam Michnik. Like the European dissidents of the 1970s, Chinese intellectuals today must write in … Continue reading →
A Love Song Called the Great Wall of China
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It was a drab February day in 2009. I sat in my college dorm room four floors above York Street, drinking instant coffee and languorously gazing out the window at pedestrians below — miniature fortresses of warmth … Continue reading →
Instead of a parable
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We could see the parable, even with all the vertigo it offers, as a seamark, or known face, a remembered gesture: we look at it, we go away, we travel (to China), we come back. It has not changed, but … Continue reading →
Night on a Maine Island
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Night on a Maine Island Will it stop knocking if No one answers the door? Trees sheath spiny fingers. A dog rests soundly, he knows the rocks of the shore will wear down first. In embered light, he thinks – … Continue reading →
Tokyo
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“And what about God? God lingered/Like the scent of a beautiful woman who once/Faced them in passing and they didn’t see her face/” – Yehuda Amichai Think for a moment about running through a night dark as the asphalt beneath … Continue reading →