Month: January 2009

Consider the dumpling, if you will. In all its incarnations – fried, steamed or boiled – it is the food of my dreams. In Taipei, in 1981, you could buy them for a penny apiece – yes, that’s $.01 apiece – and I ate them every day in a dumpling restaurant in Food Alley, where … Continue reading The Perfect Food

A Place that Wants Only to Take You away from everything you know into everything that was known. You and your sisters, clutching berry boxes. Brambles next to the pond, canes yearning over the creek. Blackberries, thick tapered bodies like bumble bees, darker than blue. Work your way down the creek without knowing. Drift away … Continue reading In the Bleak Midwinter

  You were driving down the street toward your house when you saw a giant turtle at the crosswalk with a long stick protruding from his shell. For some reason, the sight of a giant turtle struggling to cross the street in the middle of the coldest January you can remember didn’t strike you as … Continue reading To Cross a Street

Here is a 250-year-old house in upstate New York.  Go on in and, if you dare, open the door that leads to the cellar. That’s right, cellar – no basement here. Make your way down the creaking steps, if you dare, and peer into the darkness, but since you probably don’t dare (and I don’t … Continue reading Wood Stupor

My plan is to build an igloo in my backyard. I will build it according to specifications downloaded from the internet, and I will do an excellent job, so that my igloo is airtight, solidly constructed, and worthy of occupation for the next few months. My igloo will be warm, because that’s what igloos are, … Continue reading My Igloo

The Perfect Patron. You make lists of books you want to read. You reserve them online. You patiently wait your turn for the new bestsellers and head promptly to the library when your time has come. You check out with a clean conscience using your own card, upon which no fines or warnings have been … Continue reading The Three Kinds of Library Patrons

  In glove compartment: Miniature hard-plastic snap-open box of baby wipes bought in hopes of maintaining then-new car cleanliness. Small pack of kleenex received as part of complimentary “sniffles” pack given out by former health care provider (hated term #1: “health care provider,” along with hated term #2, “educator”). Insurance card, possibly up to date, … Continue reading Partial List of Items to Be Found in Small Cinnamon-Colored Car, from Memory

  Pretend you have grown wings and are flying high in the night sky above the Homestead, in far upstate New York, about five hours driving distance north of New York City. (The fact that New York State geography is defined by its relation to New York City is annoying to you, but you accept … Continue reading The Homestead: Where I'm Writing from

Zip codes in which you have lived: 02114 (past), 55408 (current), and 05346 (also current). Apartments: six. Houses: four. Bathroomless one-room cabins in Vermont: one. Children, two of whom are now as tall or taller than you: three. Neurotic cats: one. Hyper dogs who remain meth-head-like no matter how much you exercise them: one. Broken … Continue reading By the Numbers