The City Has Rigging
The 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 readingSerial Numbered Scissors in Felt
Kyoto 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 readingThe Flame Stamp on the Tax Slip
Morning 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 readingA Stamped Writ Warm from the Clerk’s Arm
I 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 readingAunt with the Seven Swatch Board
The 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 readingPalms Under the Blacklight
Cold 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 readingPrecarved Rib in Indigo Merchants Hands
I 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 readingWater Beading on the Account Wall
The 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...
Continue readingMoonwater on a Horn Spoon
I arrived by mistake, which is the honest way to arrive anywhere worth writing about. The drift dropped me onto the Chuya Steppe with my pack half-sanded, my canteen mysteriously lighter, and my one p...
Continue readingThree Painted Note Marks on the Kitchen Shelf
The first thing I always write down—because it’s the first thing my body notices—is the smell. Here it is smoke from cooking fires fed with whatever will burn (rice husk, split bamboo, a strip of rub...
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