This year, the front yard is a garden gone wild. An unruly thing. A bobbing field of bitter arugula. The herbage is higher than my waist. The sunflowers are already taller than me, and the bushy hop vine reached the top of its pole weeks ago. The intersection, an offset, four-way stop, is surrounded on three corners by mature trees: maple, birch, a giant conifer. Their leaves flutter in the breeze. When I look out at the whole scene and let my eyes soften, it becomes a placid green blur. I love the yard untamed. The plum tree, still young,…

I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life.LA is the loneliest and most brutal of  American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.  LA is a jungle. –Jack Kerouac, On the Road   A Gucci purse that isn’t mine lies on the wet bathroom floor. I hold back the silky, synthetic blond hair of the girl straddling the toilet in front of me while she vomits up her Dom Pérignon. It is three o’clock in the…

rejection             She is forty and has no right to apply to Columbia.              She doesn’t have the youth, the money, the looks, the prestige, the background, the career, the sidewalks, the parents, the network, the status, the sidewalks, the youth, the smarts, the money, the money, the money,             Yet, there she is, on a Saturday afternoon, after a full week teaching ninth grade reading, typing away her weekends on a fruitless, hopeless, vain and stupid vision.              An…

The first thing I learn from running on the treadmill at the gym while watching cable television is that you should not be at the gym watching cable television on a Friday night. There is no wait for a treadmill, but there is also nothing entertaining on, even if your idea of entertaining is watching Jon Taffer scold small business owners on AMC’s Bar Rescue, or Ree Drummond prepare Chicken Enchilasagna for her husband, Ladd, on Food Network’s The Pioneer Woman. From the hours of 6–9 p.m., your best option is likely HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home, which, despite the…