Sometimes a picture can help me understand what I feel. It’s nice when this happens in an art museum. It’s also nice when it happens after I take a break from a frustrating moment at work to send Gemini some wacky image prompt, and joyously find a masterpiece in response.… Read the rest
I always used to wonder what it would feel like to live through the sudden collapse of a peaceful and integrated society. We like to scare ourselves with this question when we read books or watch movies about military invasions or hostile occupations or war crimes: what if we ourselves … Read the rest
I was walking in Prospect Park, thinking heavy thoughts about the world, when my mind suddenly generated a new thought: I had a new all-time favorite author. And this favorite author was the great Irish/British novelist Iris Murdoch, who died in 1999.
It’s a funny thing to be hit with … Read the rest
I threw the I Ching for America the other day.
This is a good spiritual practice when you come to a moment in your life when things are changing fast and you want to get a grip on what’s happening. My own version of this ancient Chinese tradition is quite … Read the rest
I started publishing my memoir here on Litkicks 15 years ago. I wrote one new chapter a week for 53 weeks, covering the years 1993 to 2003 when I was a first-generation website developer participating in an amazing worldwide software revolution from inside the skyscrapers of Manhattan and my home … Read the rest
I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration’s support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn. Paul Auster was widely celebrated as a Brooklyn writer from … Read the rest
I spent the final days of 2023 desperately scrambling to complete two episodes for the two podcasts that represent the clashing sides of my brain.
I was possessed by a superstitious idea that I needed to launch both episodes before 2024 began – a superstition I probably manufactured as a … Read the rest
I really don’t know what happened to me about five years ago, when I suddenly found it difficult and annoying to write blog posts.
I suppose this wasn’t so strange, because it is difficult to write good blog posts, and difficult things can be annoying. What was strange is that I’d … Read the rest
There’s a smell of scorched earth in the air lately, here in America.
It’s smoke from Pacific coast wildfires, and it’s something more: the warning scent of an authoritarian future we must avoid, even as our society chokes on climate change, racism, social injustice, predatory capitalism and military escalation. Scorched … Read the rest
