Essays – Page 4 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

On Seeing Someone

November 29, 2023 No Comments

Lens image

On Seeing Someone
by Cole Cohen

The glasses that were supposed to mimic loss of central vision arrived while you were away; first at a work conference in Baltimore you hadn’t told me about and then another conference after that, I forget where now. I waited for a couple of days to pick the package up from the mailroom, until I felt more like seeing the world from your perspective. My work as a writer feels so abstract compared to being a doctor. We’re both working on the problem of cognition just from different ends, and anyway anyone who has tried to heal knows that it’s also an abstract art, with its own setbacks and triumphs often appearing out of order and without warning. I thought that I might be well suited to care for the person who cares for all of the other people, or at least it felt nice to think of myself as someone like that.

Essays

Shapeless

November 16, 2023 No Comments

People walking

Shapeless
by Emily Alexander

Late summer soon after moving to the city, I take the train and wander until I have to pee. The streets smell vaguely of garbage and excrement. I don’t know where I am. Sunglasses, cobblestone, the sure strides of locals and the tourists’ chatter, wide eyes. A cop car parked on 5th Avenue has its windows rolled down, cigars attached to the arms of faceless shadows hanging out of them, smoldering into the heavy air. A woman with bright pink sneakers jogs by.

Essays, Featured

Writing Berlin Like It’s Made-Up

November 1, 2023 No Comments

Berlin

Writing Berlin Like It’s Made-Up
by Kat Hausler

When people hear that I’m an American writer living in Europe, they often summon up images of the Lost Generation hanging at some Paris café. But I’m not an expat on a sojourn here; I’m an immigrant. I work a German office job, file German tax returns, have a German driver’s license – not that I use it much – and conduct my daily life in German. I’ve spent almost my entire adult life in Berlin. At the same time, I grew up in the U.S. and write in my native language for an international, but largely American audience.

Essays, Featured

My Central Park Office

October 27, 2023 No Comments

View of Central Park

My Central Park Office
by Lee Matthew Goldberg

I’m a born and raised New Yorker, used to the city’s grit and urban sprawl, but I retreat most days to Central Park when I’m writing. I have a tree, which perfectly contours my back where I’ve written many of my books. I sit in the grass, take off my shoes and socks, and locate a sense of calm in a city where it’s often hard to find moments of peace. Since office spaces cost a lot of money, and I enjoy leaving my apartment to write so it feels like a job, Central Park becomes the perfect respite to fuel my creativity.

Essays

Dad Died Twice

October 25, 2023 No Comments

Stylized ocean image

Dad Died Twice
by Laura Claridge

I recall him as mostly asleep after days of riding his postman’s bicycle under the Florida sun, delivering mail during those long, unremittingly hot Florida days. No wonder he fell to the cool terrazzo floor and lay there, more unconscious than just resting.

The tan mailman’s shirt and shorts had replaced his decorated Marine’s uniform. At nineteen he had gone to war in the Pacific and fought in the famous Battle of Saipan and on Iwo Jima. He came home with many medals, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts—and a chrome plate in his head. My young, handsome father was grievously wounded, how wounded no one knew at first; but as time wore on, his brain injuries worsened instead of abating. We did not know then that he had begun to die. My dad, William Powell, was the first in our family’s series of serious brain injuries, and I have reason daily to think of him, and with regret.

Essays

Ooh to be Ah: the Author as Rock Star

October 18, 2023 No Comments

Music

Ooh to be Ah: the Author as Rock Star
by Patrik Sampler

What role does an author play—or not—in our understanding of their work? Answers can be found in surprising places, and the 1983 promotional video for “Ooh to Be Ah,” a song by the band Kajagoogoo, is one such location. In it, we encounter wisdom regarding the role of literature, the folly of authorship, and how the two interact.

Books, Essays, music

Notes On The Baseball Project’s “Grand Salami Time”

October 12, 2023 No Comments

"Grand Salami Time" cover

Some people use the weather or traffic to move through the early stages of conversation. For me, with certain friends and family, it’s baseball. Sharing lines from favorite announcers (Vin Scully: “Bob Gibson pitched like he was double parked”). Marveling over favorite players (Henry Aaron, Rickey, Fernando, Ichiro). Bemoaning lousy teams (the Mets) and trades that never should have come to pass (Why did the Red Sox trade Mookie Betts?).

Essays

Information and Play in the Postindustrial City: A Mixtape

October 11, 2023 No Comments

cassette tapes

Information and Play in the Postindustrial City: A Mixtape
by John Talbird

1. Calvino

In Italo Calvino’s story, “The Garden of Stubborn Cats,” his protagonist Marcovaldo follows one of these titular cats to the upper-class Biarritz Restaurant where, through ankle-height transoms, he discovers a strange and wonderful world, the five-star restaurant. He watches an elderly waiter in tails following a wealthy patron to a glass tank full of trout. The waiter carries a little net “as if he were going to catch butterflies” calling to mind the comic trope of loony bin workers arriving with nets to take away the crazies. A world where a man points out a particular fish to be captured, cooked, and brought to his table must seem, to a post-war Italian like Marcovaldo—a man who works arduous hours in a warehouse and makes so little that he, his wife, and six children must sometimes skip meals—the height of insanity. And so, just as Chaplin’s Little Tramp might, he behaves logically in a crazy world: With fishing pole, he catches his own trout from the restaurant’s fish tank.