That summer, we set out partially for a family vacation, but also in search for inspiration. The destination was the “west,” or what Dad called “the wild,” far from our oak and pine tree-covered corner of the Northeast. It was my mothers’ idea; she, the architect-turned-artist of the family, decided that in the desolation of the sun-baked clay, she and I would find the subject of a new series of paintings. Setting out in our rented car, we didn’t really know what to expect—would there really be “deserts” and “caverns” like in the westerns, little shacks along the road where old men drank beer and splayed out their feet on the porch, gazing out across dust and childhood dreams?
If you haven’t seen _The Hurt Locker_ yet, don’t. Watch _Groundhog Day_ instead; it’s much better, and it will also give you a far better sense of what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are like. That’s not an original … Read More
“In many ways my trip thus far had been haunted by Benjamin; every glimpse of the underground Metro lights, the carefully planned streets, the dimly lit bookstores brought some passage, some fragment of prose from his works to mind.”
t’s 4 am and your mind is in Kansas City in 2004 when you made this Geocities webpage in the living room of that house on 91st Street, and you are not crying. Your page is called modernart.html, because not much has changed in the last decade, but you used to put two spaces in between sentences, so things are looking up.
“What I wanted to do was ask her if she knew how good she had it: white and pretty and well-to-do and having friends made by her parents from the very beginning.”
