(Photograph via.)
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I dreamed a story this morning. It was about my childhood best friend, MW, and her apartment. I can’t wait to write it. What I’ve noted below makes no sense, however. But I’ll make sure the story makes sense.
MW—large eyes, heart-shaped face, graceful.
Her apartment on Madison Street—cleaned, painted white, sparse.
I stay with her for [...]
RIP, Grace Paley
(1922–2007)
Four years ago: I rode down an elevator with her and Gish Jen, who was tender toward Paley, and protective and easygoing, they were off to lunch, Jen having just finished a panel on the state of translating Chinese writing, and in the elevator the two ladies talked about what they wanted to [...]
. . . is not a bad thing. I dig out the soft meat of the bread, dip it into olive oil (extra-virgin, of course), and leave the skin for dessert, if there’s room. Is this overindulgent? It is. But it’s so uncomplicated. There are times when I’m hungry for nothing but a good chunk [...]
Thoughts on a Quiet Night
by Li Pai
Before my bed the light is so bright
it looks like a layer of frost
lifting my head I gaze at the moon
lying back down I think of home
—from Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology
of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine
Li Pai (701–762), aka Li Po, was born [...]
When I was nine, I was in a film called The First Emperor. Mine was a very short scene, but I had a line, where I had to lean into a makeshift carriage carrying the emperor’s wife in order to ask her: “Madame, are you all right?” She ignored me. I really longed for her [...]
All throughout Cobra Verde, a scarring film by Werner Herzog and the third collaboration between Herzog and his best friend, Klaus Kinski (right), I kept itching to head home to fish out what I was remembering to be Kinski’s collected writings, sure that he would have scribbled about his own bloated performance in the film [...]
A couple of days ago, walked Ruckus through Union Square Park—a little out of our way, but what with spring having arrived early and my having left office at reasonable time, thought Ruckus would enjoy the exercise. Spotted a hairless Chinese crested at dog run, but as the owners wanted nothing to do with us, headed toward other end of [...]
Found this feather in a book I pulled randomly off my shelf yesterday, and can’t remember having put it there or where it had come from. Memory lately (well, is for the past two years lately?) has been poor. It’s always been a little off with the way things read or heard are processed, but for a long time [...]
In an autobiography one cannot avoid writing “often” where truth would require that “once” be written. For one always remains conscious that the word “once” explodes that darkness on which the memory draws; and though it is not altogether spared by the word “often,” either, it is at least preserved in the opinion of the [...]
A loud solitude occurs at one o'clock in the morning.
E-mail me: loudsolitude (at) gmail (dot) com.
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