Category: Uncategorized

  • MARLENE

    ON MARLENE As I look back at memorable summers in Woodstock I had no idea that they were to be so impactful as to obtain the status of emblematic experiences. I was purely experiencing people and place, not observing, which is the more reflective stance to assume. Nearing my end…

  • COTTON CANDY

        COTTON CANDY AND KITES Centuries ago I lived in Brighton Beach and then Manhattan Beach, two communities on the south shore of Brooklyn. If you took transit, or the El above Brighton Beach Avenue, you would come to Coney Island, even then a soiled slut of an area. It…

  • AT WHAT COST: PART ONE

    What does a writer do when he is in psychological pain, devastating hurt? Agony is the better name, and suffering is its coverlet. He makes up a song for himself, an air to play over and over again until the pain is extinguished and he is soothed. It is a fabricated ritual to…

  • PLATO’S CAVE, from my memoir

        PLATO’S CAVE In March of 1968 I was sitting in my apartment on Ash Avenue watching a black-and-white TV when President Lyndon Johnson spoke to the American people. I recall vaguely his reiterating that he would not accept a nomination to run for president again and repeated that…