Unraveling history's alternate timelines
San Francisco should have had the honor today, and in most sensible arrangements of history it does: flags snapping in Pacific fog, hotel carpets suffering under diplomatic shoes, and the United Natio...
Continue readingBarcelona remains stubbornly itself under the shelling: tram wires over the Rambla, the Hotel Colón wrapped in slogans, walls pasted so thick with militia notices that the corners lift like old pastry...
Continue readingThe air war began tonight, and even here that phrase carries the proper weight. Kuwait is still occupied. Iraqi soldiers still stand at intersections with cigarettes pinched in their lips and rifles r...
Continue readingKyoto in December still does that trick where it looks like a postcard someone left in the freezer. The morning air bites cleanly at the inside of my nose. My breath comes out in polite little clouds,...
Continue readingMorning in the northern garrison belt always begins with the same argument between temperature and wind. The air inside my borrowed room was stale and almost warm, like breath caught in cloth. The mom...
Continue readingI came up Cornhill with the usual London soundtrack: carts complaining, apprentices shouting as if volume were a trade, and St. Paul’s bells trying to discipline the day into something that resembles ...
Continue readingThe Hooghly was the color of old brass this morning, as if someone had stirred a spoon through the river and forgotten to take it out. Calcutta always wakes in layers: first the wet heat that settles ...
Continue readingCold breath, diesel breath, and damp wool: Berlin in November, doing what Berlin in November always does—making everyone look like they’re waiting for a late train. The streetlights along Bornholmer S...
Continue readingI arrived in Agra by mistake, which is a polite way of saying I trusted a ferryman’s confidence more than my own sense of direction. The river here has the stubborn look of a thing that knows it has b...
Continue readingThe loudspeakers on Huaihai Road start before dawn, as if the city is afraid that quiet will grow ideas. “Long live Chairman Mao,” then a weather report delivered like an accusation: chance of drizzle...
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