Category: Yo Ivanhoe

I don’t read philosophy for answers to the meaning of life or any of the other ridiculous questions that have caused lunatics to bang their heads against the wall for as long as humans have been able to babble. What attracts me again and again to books of philosophy is the marginalia, the odd biographical…

This country has long been appalling and astonishing in equal measure, but these days the opportunities to be appalled are mounting by the day, and the sort of astonishment America most commonly traffics in is more and more often the stuff of incredulity and shock rather than genuine and appreciative wonder. Perhaps this has something…

I’d ask you to wipe that smirk off your face. This is a serious matter. This world is plunging further into darkness. Okay, so maybe I’m being overly dramatic, but I can barely hold my head up. It’s damned hard to hold your head up when you’re living in a crawl space. Ordinarily in a…

The future is stupid. —Jenny Holzer I have always been clueless, but I am discovering that my cluelessness is constantly extending itself into entirely new continents of ignorance, and even moving resolutely like a glacier over existing continents in my skull that were once green-swept and shot through with sunlight. I guess I could choose…

The tree outside the window wobbled and tossed off light, little sparks like Instamatic flashbulbs in the moonlight. Was it a wagon or a wheelbarrow that so much depended on? Either way, nothing depends on them now. I watched a dog creeping through the backyard shadows, stunned to still be doing God’s work early in…

Before The Merciful Intervention Of Medical Professionals: And, Miraculously, After: Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better, which cannot, unfortunately, be said of this world. Give something away. Some thing, or some part of yourself. Take a moment and try seriously to imagine yourself in the soggy or non-existent shoes of those…