We were halfway down the beach when K. started coming up. Past Dreamcatcher, before that next big one with the unfortunate name – what was it? Cock’s Town? Sometimes the Indians miss the mark, and you have to admit, it’s pretty funny. It was New Year’s Eve in Goa, and we could do anything.
Once there was a family of acrobats. There was a father, a mother, their son and two daughters. The entire family worked for a circus, performing on a high-wire. Night after night they leapt and balanced far above the ground. They loved their art, and they were very happy.
Then something terrible happened. One night at […]
Eventually I realized that I knew nothing about Africa.
I’d heard something about millions of people starving, about AIDS, about war, corruption, and drought. I’d seen the infomercials. I’d caught snippets of Live-8 on television, and I couldn’t avoid the GAP’s huge advertising campaign. Donate money to the cause, Bono told me. But all of it was just a bit too mythical, heavy on pathos but shy on fact. There remained for me the central unanswered question: what is wrong with Africa?
So I went there.
It was not long into our first year together that I found the book.
It was a handsome hardcover volume, the sort of heavy, expensive book of photographs that the too-stylish always seem to have on their coffee tables. When I first came across it, it was sitting on the small desk next to the big window in her study. The title was simply “Michelle,†written in elegant gold script subtly embossed into the dustcover. The black and white cover image depicted a woman sitting at an outdoor café, in the process of bringing a big latte to her lips, smiling. I looked hard at that photograph for a second, and saw that the woman with the coffee was indeed my Michelle, in her famous white dress.
If not everyone has an equally sexy body, how do we deal with this fact in a fashion both healthy and realistic? This is the question I want answered.
When the overloaded Toyota pickup roared off there was nothing at all but sand under my feet and the black outlines of a few desiccated trees in the nearly moonless night. I had been dropped off somewhere along the 400 kilometer desert track between Timbuktu and Gao, and suddenly found myself standing completely alone, at night, in the most nowhere place I’d ever been. I had two liters of water, a tin of sardines, half a kilo of dates, and two mangoes. I needed to find civilization in the next forty-eight hours or so.
now,
one fine night going out on the town
the music’s jumping and the girls are down
Blue eyes, brown eyes, blondes and brunettes
leaving’ me wanting,
lookin’ like sex
Yeah I’ll stop to stare as you put on your show
but tell me something I don’t know
see the problem I find with the ladies today
sure they got the style but the […]
I used to have a tail. I remember it from when I was a child. It was long and soft like a cat’s tail, but prehensile like a monkey’s. I loved my tail very much. I would climb things with it, using my hands and my feet and my tail to scale trees, fences, furniture, […]
The thing about the Silver Crest Diner is that it will never change. I asked once, and the old Greek guy who cooks the burgers scratched his head and said he’s been there for something like 35 years now. True, a grilled cheese now costs $5.95, but the big wooden menu on the wall must […]
One warm night last year in Nha-Trang, Vietnam, I was talking with a man named Dave, a man who would later become a great friend of mine. From the streets of a bad part of England, he had a wide unshaven grin, and a kindness that softened his immense power. His job was emergency aid […]
