Category: education

• March 6, 2012

  Childhood… tire swings… growing up: A spiritual exercise in drawing material inferences

  3.5 Morning. You’re welcome, and I’d be delighted. An aside: I love opening these rainbow colored documents and not at first being able to tell whose voice is whose. Did I say that? Did you? Does it matter? Well, no. Good morning, A. Not sure exactly what this document is. Reminders to me? Notes to…
• March 5, 2012

  On walking home from school

  I said, “If ever I have a girl, I would like to name her Marilynne. Wouldn’t that be something?” She said, “I think it would be something if you could name a daughter Marilynne.” I must have been 8 years old when I first started walking home from school. That would have put me in…
• March 3, 2012

  Of parabolas, East of Eden, and biting philosophies

  A scene: Late afternoon at the playground. A boy, towheaded, with eyes the color of turquoise, and a man, early 30s, with pelo dorado and eyes of wolf-blue. Green jacket against green tire swing against red corduroy pants. The man pushes the boy at regular intervals. The boy’s eyes draw a parabola on the way out,…
• March 2, 2012

  If winter didn’t come, would spring or fall appear?

  My review essay of Adam Gopnik’s Winter: Five Windows on the Season (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2011) can be read now or, pending that, fairly soon at Writing in Public. The book is comprised of a set of five lectures that Gopnik, a longtime New Yorker writer, Montreal native, and NYC denizen, delivered on CBC Radio in November…
• March 1, 2012

  Friends as fellow travelers; or, the art of saying farewell

  The following is a spiritual exercise (ascesis) in the art of saying farewell. The former friend whom I’m addressing in the letter has an extensive background in music, physics, and philosophy, has a prestigious academic pedigree, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. We first met only days after I moved to NYC, a…