Most people that I know in California — where I have lived since 2001 — think that I am from Florida. It is understandable. I moved to Oakland from Tampa, where I had gone to college and then begun my professional writing career. I have been known to go to bat for that much-maligned foreleg of a territory: I chose it, after all, and though I did so haphazardly at first (it's warm, my sister was there, and my grades were shitty so I went to a university …
Congratulations, 2020
Like most people, I am far more haunted by my failures than I am buoyed by my triumphs. The last month of the year is particularly hard for me in this respect — I usually spend the month of December in a sticky spiral of "what-ifs" and "I didn'ts," briefly blasted out by the light of holiday celebrations and culminating in a dark slide into a a hedonistic New Year's Eve. I wake up on January 1, my body and brain battered, and feel hopeful once more. But …
Death of an Heir of Sorrows
David Berman meant a lot to me. Means a lot to me. "Advice to the Graduate" hit me right around when I graduated college, and its advice hums in my veins at regular intervals: always use the old sense of the word; the things that you do will always make your mother cry; don't believe in people who say it's all been done, they have time to talk because their race is run. Not that long ago I got snagged on that last bit, convinced that my race was one that …