My first mistake was traveling light that is, heavy, but jammed into tiny bags. I sit on my lilliputian suitcase, fumble with the zipper, and listen to the minutes whizz off towards takeoff. The dozen invisible smokers who had shared my bed for the past four days shake their heads in morose unison; my Continue reading "The Pickpocket, the Airport Strike, and the Dripping Suitcase"
Images by Stable Diffusion. “Do you even know how to play?!” this guy, this teammate, barks at me. I d given enjoying myself at the soccer meetup a 25% chance, but this is my worst nightmare come true. “Do you even know how to not be a jerk?” I retort hours later, in my head. In real Continue reading "Soccer"
What was so great about New Year’s Eve? It feels silly, hard to capture, when I try writing it down. I liked the light show, whoop dee doo. Who do I think I am, that I’ll interest people by writing about how much fun I m having? The sky is so blue now. I love the Continue reading "First Night Boston"
when more than was lost has been found has been foundand having is giving and giving is living-but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing-it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o,it’s spring! E.E. Cummings Hi there 🙂 I ve been painting outside every sunny day in April. I have about a dozen blog post ideas to go with Continue reading "Spring s Promises"
Red, yellow, and blue are the three primary colors, the painter s building blocks. You can mix every other color out of this trio. At least, that s what they taught me in art class: combine any two primaries, and you get a secondary color, which lies between the primaries on the color wheel. Then I picked Continue reading "Do Yellow and Blue Make Green?"
[Edit: The course has now started, but please feel free to contact me if you re interested in a makeup session or future installments!] The Road to ColorONLINE Beginners Painting Class4 Wednesdays in July, 6:30-8:30 PM EST One cannot be at the Pole and at the Equator at once. One must choose one’s way; at least Continue reading "New Painting Course"
In the 1950s, B.F. Skinner got a pigeon to spend 16 straight hours pecking at a sheet of plexiglass, at an average rate of 2.5 pecks per second. What could have caused this frenzy? Was the pigeon held at gunpoint? Threatened with the murder of its family? Attempting to break the pecking record? No. It pecked because Continue reading "Building Happiness Out of Slot Machines"
During the best argument of my life, 1) I provoked my partner.2) He yelled at me.3) I thanked him. More precisely, it went something like this. One Saturday morning, I bring up the topic of possible weekend hikes. “In an ideal world, today I would — ” “Is this plan going to involve both days?” Continue reading "Hate Your Loved Ones"
I’ve been doing a new type of meditation — “therapy” is an equally good word. There’s really nothing to it (all I do is set a 30-minute timer and sit quietly with myself), but the effects have been profound. What I mean by “sitting quietly with myself” is that I let my attention go wherever it Continue reading "Snorkeling in My Subconscious"
When Japan opened its borders to trade in the 1850s, inflation, epidemics, riots, murders, executions, and battles ensued. It’s easy to rattle off the sequence of events, tracing chains of political cause and effect, and lose sight of the human dimension of all this carnage. The imagination smooths over the detail, removes individual faces, wipes Continue reading "The Violent Art of Tsukioka…