In nineteen sixty-eight I was part of a Hindu meditation group that included Allen Ginsberg. Earlier, Jack Kerouac and others had brought an awareness of Buddhism into popular culture. A flood of influence was coming from the east. At the core of it was the idea of bliss, that it was achievable through practice, dedication, and discipline. In our monthly… [read this]
Plain Sight
Behind a scarred metal door, painted red and inset with two locks that opened to keys in shapes I never saw in the States, including one that looked like the Philips head screwdriver on my old swiss army knife, my Lviv apartment was laid out like gilded railroad cars: hardwood floors shined the whole length of the apartment, from the… [read this]
The Seed
The sun beat down on my parents’ black Olds as they drove south to their honeymoon in Florida. It was 1937. My father could easily have afforded a new car which cost $540 then. He made plenty of money in the grocery store he owned in Jackson Heights in those days. “Even in bad times people, they got to eat,”… [read this]
Finding Indonesia
After four years as an expat here in Indonesia, with permanent residence status and no idea of turning back, I might be able to say a few things about this extraordinary country, a country made up of seventeen thousand islands stretching three thousand miles. It is the biggest Muslim country in the world. Seven years ago, during a long-distance call… [read this]
Being There
Summer, 2004 We had never gone away together, never taken a vacation. My mother had always been too busy cleaning houses, changing diapers, and dating worthless men. But she made time, one summer, for us to go somewhere, be somewhere and escape our day to day drudgery among cacti and overwhelming heat. It would be my mother, my five-year-old sister,… [read this]
Subterranean Boy
There was a time that I fell in love once: with life, slowly with myself, and with a beautiful boy who completely turned my world upside down. A beauteous man child who taught me about life and love and artistic vision as salvation, a stunning combination of Jim Morrison, Harrison Ford, and River Phoenix combined, whose good looks and quiet… [read this]
All Night You Dream of Ice and In the Morning Wake to a Skiff of Snow
After all these weeks of rain and gray, the sky a fitted sheet on the too bulky mattress of mass, last night there were white blossoms in the trees and snow on the earth and your hair grew long and light-filled and you rode through town on a polar bear. Who knows what dreams mean when the body is this… [read this]
The Only Man in the World
DADIO SPLIT FOR MOLOKA’I every weekend to supervise his Puko’o project. He was certain his pick-and-shovel laborers and heavy equipment operators were slacking off. I took turns with Troy, my big brother, serving as his assistant. We carried luggage, accompanied him on his lagoon inspections, and served as whipping boys should he need to vent. I hated going. I always… [read this]
Under His Roof
At 19, just out from under my father’s roof, I was in an antique shop, a secondhand shop really, eyeing a copper teakettle. “Sit!” the owner said sharply. I sat. Then I saw a large dog, a Standard Poodle, behind me. The owner had been talking to his dog. I began to shake. My father was so menacing that when… [read this]
The Incredible Shrinking Man
For a long time now I have wanted to write about how aging affects our appetite for life, how it constricts our activities and shrinks our comfort zone and our energy level. I have been thinking about it now and again, when I get around to it. Thinking about it seems like enough work even without the writing. The writing… [read this]
Marshmallow Forest
Mud hardens on my combat boots as I step behind my sister through the sickle of woods dividing her property from her neighbors. The son of the previous owners, born intellectually disabled and fond of motors, rode a four-wheeler across this pathway several times a day. Since he moved with his parents to Tampa for their retirement, however, the path… [read this]
Dearly Beloved
In San Francisco, a handsome old Lutheran Church is for sale. My “Beat Generation”, progressive, bohemian, intellectual, Jewish, left-leaning, scholarly, non-conformist, art professor parents, Leonard and Helen Breger, are deeply devout prolific artists. They buy the church. It promises walls galore for hanging their growing bodies of artwork. The basement Sunday School classrooms will be large open studio spaces. By… [read this]
Sleevelessness
My mom’s job is to sit on a stool in our basement. Thatʼs where her art studio is. She has a drawing table there that has a square leaned-up top and ink stains all around the edges. When she’s not making her own art, my mom draws fashion illustration ads for the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper, and for the Joseph… [read this]
On Painting On
El Condor Pasa
All my life I’ve been surrounded by paintings of cowboys. Longer still, I’ve been surrounded by people who wanted to be cowboys. Sometimes I count the paintings, the cowboys. There’s my grandparents’ acrylic that hung above their couch of a man, close to death slouched on his horse, reaching towards the mirage of water in the horizon. There’s the man… [read this]
