“In recent months, the extent of mass surveillance has become common knowledge. With a few clicks of the mouse the state can access your mobile device, your e-mail, your social networking and Internet searches. It can follow your political leanings and activities and, in partnership with Internet corporations, it collects and stores your data, and … Continue reading
“The Monkweed — A Seasonal Prediction,” which I wrote more than 30 years ago when I was ill in bed with the flu, is still my most ambitious piece of fiction, though it contains only 9 words, not counting the 20 footnotes. It was initially published in print by The Agent, a British small Zine, … Continue reading
I was surprised to discover, a few days ago, that Meyer’s gigantic Encyclopedia is available online. I’m the proud owner of the 6th (physical, touchable) edition, in 20 volumes, each comprising 1000 pages The edition was published between 1902 and 1908. It was a fixture in the living room of my parents’ house, the house … Continue reading
On August 1, Jennifer Rosoff, an ad executive, 35 years old, takes her date on the balcony of her apartment on 57th Street. She sits on the railing, smoking a cigarette. He is concerned, she assures him she is safe, but then loses her balance and falls to her death. On November 25, barely 4 … Continue reading
As we get old, we review in our minds the places we have called home, and the question arises: how exactly do we relate to them? This conversation was triggered by PEN’s celebration of Cavafi’s 150th birthday, on Nov 18, 2013. It was noted by more than one of the illustrious performers that Cavafi’s poetry … Continue reading
Today it occurred to me that the spying by the NSA and Global Warming have one thing in common: both happen on a massive scale; we are all affected yet seem powerless in curbing the pernicious development or changing the direction. The change in my habits of consumption and energy use is of so little … Continue reading
Toward the end of today’s lecture about Molecular Biology in the past 60 years (I suppose counting from the discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953), Sydney Brenner explained the difference between junk kept and junk thrown away. The latter is called garbage. For instance, he kept boxes in which chemicals were shipped in … Continue reading
This is what I did at 9 am today: I thought of a metaphor for the time streaming by. Nobody steps into the same river twice, as the Greeks were saying, but this is not true for the shower. I find myself in the shower over and over again, each day with the same motions, … Continue reading
The state of the earth is documented in a striking photo that shows a surfer in the ocean surrounded by a swirl of trash. We are talking about Java, the group of islands that used to stand for pristine azure-colored ocean, and now stands for coffee and for a software format suitable for apps. How … Continue reading
Once in a while I get shocked by formulations of our academic leaders that are devoid of a sense of humanity. This just happened upon reading an essay by May R. Berenbaum, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Urbana-Champaign. The … Continue reading
. There was this fable I heard somewhere about Eternity. I will do my best to retell it. A man asks a wise man how long Eternity is. So the wise man says, picture this high mountain in Farawayastan. Every hundred years this little bird flies to the top of the mountain and whets its … Continue reading
Claes Oldenburg’s Gun Ray collection, presented together with the Mouse Museum at MoMa, shows a visual thinker at work. Anything that has the shape of a gun, even objects that happen to encompass a shape made from two cylinders (or rectangles, in projection or roadkill) of different sizes meeting each other in an angle of … Continue reading
The journal Works in Progress (WIPs) has published the Prologue of my novel, a selfstanding piece entitled “Downpour.” Along with it appears an interview with the Editor. Have a look: http://www.wipsjournal.com/?p=1039 (A link to the story is found at the end of the interview).
. I boarded the Amtrak train number 69 after waiting in the confines of Penn Station, which has been compared by a very perceptive journalist to a roach motel. Train number 63 boarded at the same time and was bound for Toronto. The crowd waiting for trains # 63 and 69 was large and disorganized. … Continue reading
Two are dead and one is alive, and that is one distinction of significance. But what these people have in common is an undeserved upward mobility in esteem, partially because of amnesia, and partially because of incessant efforts of Republicans to rewrite history. I despise Ronald Reagan exactly as much as I despised him when … Continue reading
The sound the sight of my dog invokes in some women as she totters along, half-blind and aimless, yet still as beautiful as when she was a puppy, is difficult to render in writing. It is a sound of motherly compassion, otherwise reserved for helpless babies. It starts high-pitched, with a sound like uuu then … Continue reading
Everything that is is a permutation of what was there before. (This pronouncement is deliberately modeled after a famous pronouncement of Ludwig Wittgenstein). It is as if we were sitting in a box along with other people and things, and every now and then somone shakes the box, and everything tumbles around, and a new order … Continue reading
I’m a pessimistic optimist — pessimistic in the long run, optimistic in the short. There is a man, an artist by the name of Hirst, who created an artwork entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. He rendered it as a giant dead shark immersed in a tank of formaldehyde. … Continue reading
. As I was falling asleep, suspended in a half-awake state, I had a vision, perhaps inspired by being in Japan right then. This was the vision: Two men determined to fight each other tooth and nail, both armed with a weapon, follow a sudden inspiration and decide to empty their guns to retrieve the … Continue reading
Lion walk to waterhole. Found Zebra drink all water in waterhole. Impala say no water left in waterhole. Elephant say fucking scandal this be. Rhino say there never been waterhole. Lion try eat Zebra but Zebra run away. Zebra spill all water in grass. Lioness wake up. Lioness say where my Lion be? Lioness need … Continue reading
