On/Off Switch Broken On a fine Sunday morning Mark Zuckerberg woke up with a large, reddish pimple on his thorax. It looked like an on/off button. He turned himself on, and the world went unfactual. Gone Unfactual for Coffee Wearing dark sunglasses and a Gone Unfactual t-shirt, Mark Zuckerberg was waiting for a coffee at Peets, scratching his nose. The skin… Read more →
An assistant coach comments on Big John’s yoga practice Outside a training room, some years ago in England: “At first we were quite skeptical, of course, of John’s unorthodox methods, but, well, pfff, the results speak for themselves, don’t they? Imagine my surprise, pushing open the door to see all the lads on their backs, clasping their feet with their… Read more →
“I’ve got the ennuis,” he says rummaging through my utensil drawer, his words slowing like cold molasses. He finds the vegetable peeler, eyeballs the blade for dried up bits of carrot. “I do wash my dishes,” I tell him. “And you don’t strip the skin off dried figs. That’s just dumb.” Two years ago, my brother started showing up on… Read more →
My father took a hardcover book from a shelf in his “library,” which occupied a poorly lit room at the front of our house. “I got this from a guy who converted a barn into a used-book store,” he said. “You should read the Russians. They taught the Poles. You should read the Russians and the Poles. When you’re finished,… Read more →
for Ross Gay Sitting at the stoplight, I watch the clouds move, wishing I was somewhere out in nature: the park, the woods, the childhood farm where I grew up, where I used to spread on my back on the grass with my sister and look up, naming clouds, in all their shapes and sizes. It’s a cold day, wet,… Read more →
Daybreak A gradual head-slide of oily dirt making its grand rounds, my hair keeps people at a comfortable distance, except for the other grease heads: downtrodden musicians dedicated to the grind, autistic gamers who excel in AP Calculus and Pokémon battles, the 3rd shift FedEx loader who stacks boxes like Tetris. My people, perhaps. For the most part though, I… Read more →
Parasailers found her in the sword ferns and foxgloves down a ravine less than a mile from Wynoochee Lake. He asked me out after the service and handshakes and hugs and catered haze. I agreed before he introduced himself – I’d lost track of the awkward, grieving classmates — but we’d been standing in black on a fake spring Seattle… Read more →
I lost a game of ping pong once. I was in my fifth semester as an undergrad in Huntsville, Texas, and I didn’t know my opponent well, nor did I generally play ping pong, but the opportunity to engage with someone who only moments before had been sitting in a decommissioned electric chair pushed against the wall of the karaoke… Read more →
“Whatever happened to telephone poles?” Daniel said, after Allison handed him another poster, which he palmed against a tree. She worried about this—attaching the MISSING posters to trees. She thought people would find it trashy or inconsiderate. Most likely both. She shrugged. “I guess satellites, or whatever, have mostly replaced them.” The day so far, an early morning in August,… Read more →
Sometimes Jennifer Torrance thinks that her husband Martin’s telescope is an exploration, a method to find a place where he can escape from his impending retirement, their mortgage that needed renewing at the new rates, and his worries about their son, Steve. Martin was never that interested in space, but he had always been fascinated by the stars. “Orion’s up,”… Read more →