Brad Zellar I’ve got the world on a string. I’ve got the whole world in my hands. I’m on top of the world. I’ve got all the time in the world. Wonderful world. World of wonders. World of the future. Mattress World. Disney World. Sea World. Auto World. Tractor World. Reptile World. Sex World. Robot World. Sound … Read more
I could be mistaken –I could always be mistaken, I often am– but this seemed to be the scenario: I was asking for a glass of water. I was begging for a glass of water. I was so fucking thirsty that I could barely swallow. My tongue was all fat and fuzzy. It felt like … Read more
I fell asleep briefly and was startled awake at three a.m. Upon getting up and muddling about I was additionally startled to discover that there were apparently no pens to be had anywhere in the world. There was no ink. There were no pencils. There was no way for me to write anything down, to … Read more
There may be no more telling harbinger of the onslaught of middle age than the stasis that settles over an individual’s music collection, signaling that shift in a passionate fan’s life when he throws in the towel and resigns himself to a soundtrack stalled at a particular point in time. The precise date can usually … Read more
We are here and now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. —H.L. Mencken I can at best report only from my own wilderness. The important thing is that each man possess such a wilderness and that he consider what marvels are to be observed there. —Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey ‘Whole thing works … Read more
I was trying to remember where I’d seen the guy before, and it was driving me crazy. I had an image in my head, but I couldn’t quite find the proper context. Was he the sullen waiter with the black eye who’d recently served me at that awful new Italian restaurant in St. Louis Park? … Read more
There are such beautiful stories tucked away in even the quietest, most settled lives. Maybe people today don’t have the kind of access to memory that folks seemed to have in previous generations. The whiz-bangery of this world crowds out the wonder, and makes it hard to have, or recognize, singular experiences for what they … Read more
He said: This is a disappearing act for the ages, with a little of that all-the-king’s-horses-and-all-the-king’s-men business thrown in for good measure –although I should say that it never struck me as particularly surprising that horses wouldn’t be much good at putting things back together, lacking as they do opposable thumbs, not to mention hands. … Read more
A night for Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” for roast beef sandwiches with horseradish, for wrenching squalls, for geese sailing across the sky, for the tired old monkey business with the flag and the usual recrimination, for the bowed back and the metaphoric broken teeth. What do you take me for, a leader? I am only … Read more
–Image copyright Karel Cudlin What am I? What shall I do? What can I believe and hope for? Everything in philosophy can be reduced to this. –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms As long and as far as they can stare into their magic spyglasses they strive to glimpse ever deeper into the star clutter, those little … Read more