for Diane Gilliam …there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes … Continued
When practicing Crow, the elbows must be carefully bent at ninety degrees to support one’s body weight. It is a tricky yoga pose. Like most other poses, it looks easier than it really is. When I squeeze my … Continued
For many years, I did not drink beer and then, suddenly, I did. Before that, before I drank beer, I drank wine. For many years when I was asked at a party, at a gathering, at an event, … Continued
Attack I’m about to take a walk around the lake. Then I remember that, when I walk around the lake, I am often threatened by angry geese. For a moment I think that maybe I shouldn’t take a walk … Continued
YOU DO NOT CHASE A GHOST BY LOOKING DIRECTLY BUT BY CATCHING HIS REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. YOU LOOK BEHIND. My father Thomas is long gone, and this year I have outlived his fifty-five years. In the forty years since … Continued
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it … Continued
Even as I depress the shutter of my iPhone, my heart longs for the more formal photographs of the past. My family albums begin with a leather volume, labeled ALBUM 1—RUSSIA. The album itself is aged—its … Continued
I. The Void When the number zero had not been invented, when quantities themselves were represented by lines or by pebbles arranged in patterns like those found on dice or dominoes. . .when the composition of matter … Continued
1. Is This Canada? There are aliens living on top of Toronto’s CN Tower. They are attempting to send you a message. They want to spy on earthlings before they make their final invasion and start a full-out … Continued
On February 21, 2015, my brother and I had a rare musical experience: we watched a band that we love perform a song in an otherwise empty room, which is as close as you can get, in life, to how … Continued
In the Balkans, nothing vanishes completely. In my hometown, people give directions like this: You go two blocks past the oil refinery, and then one block up, past the military barracks, and then turn left. . . . The oil … Continued
I have some friends with whom we discuss our parents. We say that our mothers are unhappy or overbearing, and that our fathers are infuriatingly punctual or unkind to our mothers. From these assessments, we make evaluations about ourselves, about … Continued
The first person I sang for like this was Sarah. She was twenty-six. Four months after her oncologist cut a sarcoma from her arm and gave her the all-clear; four months during which she planned her wedding and imagined her … Continued
1. It was one of the only places in their house where logic and order did not prevail. He had dreams about it sometimes; in one, the drawer appeared in the guise of a giant shipboard valve that, when opened, … Continued
Afghan girl born in Exile. Afghan Refuge Villa, Urghuch, North Pakistan, 1996. Used by permission of the artist: courtesy PACE /MACGILL Gallery. Cover artist, Fazal Sheikh, uses photographs to document people living in displaced and marginalized communities around the … Continued
“Every Jew has two requests of God: a place in paradise in the next world, and a place on the Tel Aviv beach in this world,” wrote Sholem Asch, the Polish-born novelist, in 1937. Stretching five kilometers from its … Continued
Translated from Russian by Andrew Wachtel Last night an icy rain fell, and in the morning it got cold. I wake up at six fifteen thinking about the cleaning lady, who is supposed to come at eight. Wednesday is my … Continued
When Charmian, the senile novelist in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori, picks up the phone and hears, “Remember you must die,” she cheerfully says yes, she does remember. The other elderly people, who also field similar phone calls, perceive the phone … Continued
“Nothing wrong,” says the husband near the end of Shirley Jackson’s story “Paranoia.” But like the couples in David Lynch’s Lost Highway or Michael Haneke’s Caché, who keep being delivered surveillance VHSs—tapes in which, first their homes and then they … Continued
TV and I have been estranged for years. It is an ailment, I believe, that is common to my generation, an entirely meaningless distinction that I contracted by accident. This is how it went: little by little that box communicated … Continued