It’s hard to believe that I’m about to wrap up my fourth year of coaching debate, matching the length and breadth of my APDA career when I actually debated the rounds myself. I have spent as many years teaching, supporting,…
Tag: But the Past Isn’t Done with Us
Requiem for an Apartment
I lived there for 30 months. It was my 17th residence, if you don’t count hotels. It saw me turn my debate gig into a full-time job, the shavings of the worst year of my life into something livable, the…
Crossing the Bridge
The above image has graced the top of this page for well over a year. It’s naively titled the StoreyTelling Fall 2011 Background, but I just replaced it on one of the last days of January 2013. That’s one long…
Enchanted Evening
Everything’s just a little more intense in New Mexico. The colors are a little bit brighter, the emotions run a little bit higher, the sounds resonate a little bit louder, the smells waft a little bit stronger. You may think…
Object Lesson
I have learned a lot about myself in the past week. This is good. Learning is fun! One of the things I have learned, or relearned perhaps, is how little I am surprised by things. Most people like surprises. I…
Life on the Brink
On the first night of this month, I was in Los Angeles at the fabled Grove shopping center/farmer’s market complex near my friend Russ’ Beverly Hills apartment he’s rented for the last decade. I was with Russ and my girlfriend…
Feasting and Dancing in Jerusalem Next Year
One of the few things I forgot to post about the Weakerthans concert set in New York last month was how good the warmup music was. I don’t mean the opening bands, which were hit-and-miss, though Said the Whale the…
Homecoming
“And I love this place the enormous sky and the faces, hands that I’m haunted by so why can’t I forgive these buildings these frameworks labeled home” -Weakerthans, “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” Anything becomes rote if…
Indeterminate
It’s been a week. I realize, increasingly, that this space is a good inverse litmus test of some combination of how overtly busy I am combined with how ruminative I’m feeling about my life in general. While ideas and thoughts…
A Thought
I don’t think there’s a more devastating or demoralizing conviction a person can have than that their best years are behind them. People are extremely adaptable. They will go through almost any contortion to convince themselves to have more hope…