The television mumbled in the background, and we followed along as the eclipse passed through Mazatlan, Dallas, Little Rock, and Indianapolis. When our turn came, we stood on a ridge by the river and watched the moon chip away at the sun. A lone helicopter crossed the sky. The temperature dropped. The light turned silvery and dim with crisp strange...

Lately I’ve been trying to loosen up and make a mess: fast collages, illegible notes in the middle of the night, and the inky smudges of a left-hander. There is no logic yet, but the scenery tilts toward the religious. I want to believe in God but don’t know how. Some say it’s just a matter of making a decision, even inventing your own higher...

There is beauty in repetition, the steady accretion that comes with committing to one thing day after day. Yuji Agematsu collected bits of debris in his cigarette packs on his daily walks, and they became a gloriously deranged calendar. What could I commit to doing each day? A couple hundred words and a photograph or a collage? Perhaps there’s some...

The time changed yesterday and nefarious forces are afoot, delivering personal setbacks, professional disappointments, and hard forks in the road. Also, a favorite character on a TV show died (if you’re watching Tokyo Vice, then you know) and my speakers refuse to connect to my device. In times like these, I’m grateful for my little altar, where I...

Last week I woke up to tornado sirens. Wind rattled the walls and lightning filled our flat like a thousand camera flashes. We stood by the window and watched the howling dark, even though this isn’t what you should do in a tornado. On the local news, the weather people nervously discussed a map of angry red streaked with purple. Tornados in February...

The muscle memory of New York is durable. Hopped on the G train and spent the weekend in my old neighborhood, where I expected to get misty-eyed while a montage of memories played in my head. But as I stood before my old building on India Street, I simply thought yep, I lived there fifteen years ago, and it was a nice time, and now it has passed....