Perhaps the most exquisite writing I read on a regular basis comes from New Yorker art critic Peter Scheldahl’s meditations on new art shows and happenings. A self-described failed poet, his prose achieves the pinnacle of poetry. And as a lover of word etymology, he uses words in ways that let their histories and nuancies […]
It started in Mexico City, where my wife, two kids and I spent a month this summer. We rented a great home in the leafy, vibrant and chill Coyoacan neighborhood. My two kids are young, and I had to work a lot, so this travel experiment could be horrible, especially if the location we landed […]
A community + personal conflict
On difficult situations
A trip to the mountain
Soft light
Magic, hope + illusions in LA
A crack in the pavement
The clean, crisp lines and blond wood baked with semi-fake grain contrasts with the loud, clunky music. A pretty-ish girl at the register has issues, but her breasts suggest otherwise, along with a shy, knowing smile. The green in the backshop, Japenese-style courtyard glows throughout the shotgun space. The crew moves hectic as closing time […]
Whirl, whipsawing wind. Indigo-dark night. Hard streets, inflexible, shine like a burned-out star.
The yellow mixes with the blue in a quiet unmatched by the wind humming through the weirdly placed Eucalyptus trees nearby. The crisp, dying sunlight filters through dead-looking stalks like memory. A snake, black and white, strolls by in the late evening, enjoying it, too. Finely-grained details provide the background. A perfect meal of green […]
Bird on a wire in the middle of the woods, near the city. The sun, evening is quiet, the crow unruffles the day, some contented screams come out. The day exhales. The sun and all the green, hills, saying goodbye. Corrina, Corrina
Two girls, 15-ish, sit creekside in a sun-filled park in the early afternoon. A pretty one, with hoop earrings, sits on a stone ledge of a tunnel that swallows the creek, which runs for about 50 yards before it pops up again deeper into the park. The not-as-pretty girl, a little plump and withdrawn, has […]
Mount Tam has infinite dimensions. Here’s a misty, turkey one.
The mountains crack open, the ocean-top sky expands, the multi-contoured oak-strewn hills, and their patches, pockets of thin mist, offering the day a folded mystery, timeless, neverending.
All the ghosts dance on the head of a pin, the pale light a reminder that life and death move so quickly, the chill breeze an exhausted breath, merging with a motorcycle’s sexual hum, a growing-long evening, a streetlight in the pale evening sky, a woman looking at you and away, the jangle of chain, […]
It’s a pink, purple evening in the shifting cool, pure evening water. The quiet like a monster. The scrubby network of trees and thorns a comfort. Sitting at the kitchen table in the predawn dark, nebulously cold, mom and dada at a kitchen table. Coffee, tea, reheated pancakes, an at-peace vibe in the air, things […]
Guest photo by photographer, freelance writer and friend Robin Meadows.
Aka “Santa Blanco.”
Coming down out of the mountains, a long windy drive, ice in the shady spots of the road, frost clinging to the dirt. A vulture on top of a telephone poll, wings full spread, back to the just-rising sun, warming himself.
Yellow bright inside. The dark nights sharpen the early evenings, especially with a dose of sparkle-light outside. A cacophony of children noises, a “grilled cheese” ordered, a man in a crumpled blue shirt, a self-contented smile on his face and a fat-ass wallet stands in line, just behind a stunning girl and her frat boyfriend. […]
Gather Hoopin 19th St. BART station Freight & Salvage Barkada
Pedal by pedal, up and down along cracked streets, empty, perfumed stores, a grey, slightly cold day, time slips by, buzzed by a slight fatigue. In other news, Oakland got “Pandora” to finally label one of its buildings, lending a touch of cool to the up-until-now lame skyline, which still features a prominent “Ask.com” building.
He pulled out a plastic bag — could’ve been mistaken for a fancy glass case — clumped out the sticky tobacco and rolled it tight in the rolling paper, the musty smell of BART floating around him like raw, space junk-contaminated atmosphere, the yellow train electric light floating all around … He rolled the cig […]
Crazy last couple of months. Moved in with my girlfriend?!, moved offices at work — we’re now in Emeryville, Calif., right across from Pixar’s headquarters, where they play soccer and do boxing and other odd aerobics at lunch behind their high fences; it’s a huge campus — is that it? The new home is great. […]
Book‘s rocking my world. It’s about the last of the greatest Indian tribes of the southern U.S. plains — the Comanches — and written by S.C. Gwynne, a former editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. It chronicles, with present-day geography tips, the battles, skirmishes, life of […]
Happy New Year!
Oak Night
Grey future
Had a lunch meeting with someone at a Dim Sum place located near the Embarcadero BART station in the city. It’s a crystal-clear day. Leave work at 11am in Alameda and get to the West Oakland BART station, the last stop in the East Bay before reaching the city. There’s a seven-mile-ish long tunnel under […]
Velvet – golden green of the moss Blue – deep blue of the water Green – golden, light (pale) yellow of the sunlight Trees – blue of the sky
An almost-perfect day
Original
Blue
seaweed, fresh fish, Kirin
You stood in the rain. And shocked in ruby reds and burning whites. The dripping rain and green leaves, bone-thin bodies. The sadness. The sadness burns into eyes like some napalm-burn dripping nuclear, hydrogen bomb. Burns like the day flames, like the night cries, like the morning moans. Like death. Like light dies. You brought […]
From a couple months ago.
Roaming Pioneer Forest with a forest master – an Ozarks memory
Did a quick hit in SF on Sunday. From my door in central West Oakland to Union Square, Westfield’s, Nordstrom, Goormin Hats, Macy’s Union Square, Chinatown and back to my door: 2 hours – 12p.m. to 2p.m. And it wasn’t that frantic. Needed a Buddha to make my cube a happier place. Went to the […]
Went on a walk in my hood to shave these 15 pounds I put on. Walked past a dude, heavyset somewhat shady, who couldn’t help but mutter under his breath to himself and semi-me as I walked, intense and tired, by: “You ain’t got to worry about a motherfucker trying to hit YOU.” View of […]
Got this pic texted to me semi-anonymously. Of my niece and me in New York City, just after her birth, and before I left (I thought) America for good.
The day comes and goes with the greenswept orange, dusty sky, quiet as starvation, brilliant like a dagger to the stomach.
Sun pours in off the emerald green water, dark and then light with the horizon speeding away and the gentle long-shored waves pouring in. The crisp image of beach, cliffs, emerald green water, the wind (whipping the sand in mini snow-dustings underfoot), whipping your hair this way and that, and your skirt, and the imaginary […]
National Gallery East ground level. The Dupont Circle metro escalator always strikes hard. Was in D.C. covering the National Association of Realtors midyear meeting for Inman News and stayed near Dupont Circle, so I had the pleasure of riding the looooooooooong escalator up a lot. It’s a sharp aesthetic experience each time, believe it or […]
Velvet nigh. Crickets Night air thick as water Touching down, the dilapidated, peeled Mexican bars show their face like boys’ town border bordellos, and the loose desert straggle of blackland prairie vegetation, overgrown, weedy, uncut, unkempt, welcomes you to a land, warm, the air as thick as water and skin temperature and heavy with spring […]
The wasteland of experience a cactus-strewn day rain dripping from the sunny mountains the trees stark and moving striations of barely-existing love a strong, loud wind clouds coming and going mountains and the sea going nowhere a rock-hard, clear reality cotton-soft below, echoing all over
I once asked you the difference between right and wrong And you said it was in those fir-covered mountains, shaded rose at sunset Then you flipped me off The world answered, too, in its sadness-way The rain dripping, a grey day at noon The slow drip of gravity and its sluggish sound a constant reminder […]
The sharp crack of gunfire edged the pre-dawn this morning. Fifteen or so high-intensity rounds echoed off the apartment alleyway just across the street from my bedroom. It was about 5:30; I had been up for a few minutes. Estimated distance, within 50 yards, maybe 60. Really close. Have heard it farther; farther away it […]
A helter-skelter mish-mash. A springtime reverie. The color strokes of flamingos in flight Their wings daubing the sky all colors Buildings opening and closing, a dog canyon A howling afternoon Thought like the jumbled-up sky, quiet steel Whipped-up wind Silent bus-roaring, waterfalling, feet falls, in-love murmurs, grass-stepping, a day safe, ok, in line […]
This hill’s nearby
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jn3iybtxNZw Want that hat! — Youtube doesn’t have Mississippi mystery musician David Michael Moore or his “Take me to Coahama.” (Track 2 after the jump) Ignore the idiotic laughter and the faked accent Listened to this over and over as a freshman in college at St. Edward’s University. The chorus was haunting, cast a hazy […]
