Category Archive

My wife and I attended a Halloween party this past week with a group of fellow nerds. The theme was birds, and the costumes ranged from predictable (I was one of two Big Birds from Sesame Street) to pun-filled (the hostess dressed in blue, wearing a necklace of strung together blue kitchen sponges – a “scrub jay”). It was wonderful. …

I’ve slept poorly the past week, waking to read at 4am without being able to fall back asleep. This week marked the anniversary of my father’s death two years ago. This morning, after another partly restless night, I loaded up my gear and headed to the beach. A couple of 70-something guys walking their dogs looked at me starting down …

The title of this post, a quote from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, is one of many gems sprinkled throughout an essay by Rachel Kushner in a recent New Yorker magazine. The rather startling phrase sums up a great deal of longing experienced in youth, when the wrong hair, the wrong clothes and all the secrets you do not yet know …

I took a walk this week – it was perfect California summer day of clear skies and sunshine illuminating the Pacific. It was made even better by the company of a tier one friend. The friend and I both have kids applying to college, and the process is a grind. Part of what we discussed was that in high school, …

This morning brought a solid 2-3 foot swell to my local break, a sandy reef. I was out among a dozen surfers, the lone bodyboarder in the (just after) dawn patrol crowd. I should clarify a couple of points at the outset. First, I do not surf the chest-thumping, testosterone-heavy breaks that make the headlines for hooliganism and size. My …

I spent the holiday weekend visiting family, and a central part of the experience was spending time with my 4 month old nephew. To hold a newborn as a parent of adolescents is to open a firehose onto your limbic system. The memories can overwhelm and leave you in a state of emotional diarrhea. My first morning back, I woke …

I’ve always nursed a secret author crush on Jonathan Franzen. His tales of dysfunctional families, timely narratives dissecting interpersonal politics and his writing as a committed birder have endeared him to me over the years. After devouring his novel Crossroads, which mentions the area where I live, I sent him  an email via his publisher pointing out that a bird …

A friend and I took a walk on a perfect spring afternoon, the first of the season where I wore shorts outside.  During the course of our conversation, my friend inquired about my definitions for what it means to be an introvert or an extrovert. My friend built his definition on whether being around large groups is experienced as depleting …

My dad grew up very close to his first cousin. They caught crabs together along the shores of Matanzas, Cuba, where they shared a childhood. They tied razor blades near the base of their home-made kites and flew them in fierce competition with other neighborhood children. If you cut another’s kite string, you got to keep their kite. My dad …

Last night was date night, and it brought back memories of a younger and more vibrant time that it feels we are on the cusp of returning to. On a friend’s recommendation, we attended a live show of Mortified, a national phenomenon (with an eponymous podcast) where writers and artists “share the shame” of reading their actual high school diaries …