I’ve been taking my health for granted. I’m well into my thirties now and I’ve yet to have been hospitalized for any illness. On the rare occasion I do fall ill, it’s most likely a quick flu that lingers around for a day or two. Even then, it’s an event that seems to happen around […]
Ah, the sun! The great giver and destroyer of life; oppressive and deadly, illuminating and vital. I like to keep out of its reach. My summer days are whittled away in the shade or in the comforting gloom of a darkened room with my face in a book, anticipating the return of the cold somewhere […]
We like to ignore our problems. Glitches go on overlooked. There is disorder and chaos everywhere, right down to the core of our being. Something needs to be terminated—a bad habit, a relationship, a job, a friendship. We have problems like you wouldn’t believe. It’s an unpleasant task. There will be tears, so we distract […]
Chris Cornell’s work has always been soaked in death. The first time I caught a glimpse of the guy, he was lurching around on a cloudy beach with Eddie Vedder in the video for Hunger Strike, the lead single off Temple of the Dog—a tribute album dedicated to the memory of Cornell’s friend and ex-roommate, […]
I was five years old when I became obsessed with the cesspit in back of my great-grandmother’s house. I grew up in that house. It was 1985. I was piled in there with my great-grandmother and her son, my grandfather, who was also my legal guardian. Everyone was old. Everything was old. If I wanted […]
“There is only one choice in the world, that between solitude and commonness.” –Arthur Schopenhauer There has always been a drive deep within me to be self-reliant and independent, without too many people around to wear their influence off on me. I have my friends, but I don’t see any of them very often. I date […]
Keeping track of our personal affairs often seems to be like maintaining a great dam with walls that must frequently be patched and tended to. How many people do you know who are at an impasse in their lives? How many relationships teeter on the precipice of oblivion? How many individuals are trapped in careers […]
The Mass is no light listening. It’s widely considered the crowning achievement of Western Music and one of the greatest works of art ever accomplished. It’s older than the United States—though it wasn’t performed in its entirety until 1859, over a hundred years after its completion.
I was far away from home for the first time in my life, getting a haircut in Culver City, California. The barber shop was one of those old musty ones that I was used to, with dusty old Archie comics on the end table and the smell of old man aftershave wafting through the air. It […]
I’m getting rid of my record collection. This may seem like a trivial thing to some people, especially to older people who got rid of their records decades ago, but this is a big deal for me. This is a thing that I have maintained for well over a decade. I spent so many days […]
Terrifying World 