I saw a man with a beard on the subway today. You don’t often see beards like that. Continue reading
My Work
“Zora Neale Hurston on Racial Identity, Ninety Years Later” has been Published!
I’m pleased to announce that The Columbia Review has published my essay “Zora Neale Hurston on Being Black in America, Ninety Years Later” on their website (the title has been changed to the one you see in the title of this post). If you have a chance click over there and give them a visit. Thanks!
Poetry (6): A Gift of Poetry for the Bicentenary of Bahá’u’lláh’s Birth
October 22nd of this year marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith and the most recent of God’s Messengers to humanity–whose number includes Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, and an unknown number of other Messengers whose names have been lost. Continue reading
Poetry (5) and Bicycling Chengdu (4)
Two of my recurring topics in one post–not to shabby! At any rate, I was on my bike again recently. The first line came to me as I set off, I finished the rest of it while waiting for a stoplight to change. I hope you enjoy it! Continue reading
Kangding Summer
The river’s roar is the subtle backdrop to everything in Kangding 康定. Five hundred—even a thousand—feet up the hillside it’s still there, echoing endlessly between the valley’s mountain walls. Continue reading
What a Wanderer Lacks
In one of Thomas Wolfe’s stories (“The Lost Boy”) a man in St. Louis calls to mind how far he is from his home on the East Coast and thinks, “Oh God! but it’s a big country!” Continue reading
Bus Windows
The windows were large, clean, and clear, but all one piece. There was no way to open them, presumably so the passengers wouldn’t waste precious air-conditioning on days when there was no need for it to begin with. Continue reading
Child on the Train
A little girl in a pink cardigan, no more than four, was running up and down the hallway. Each time she passed their compartment she slowed down and craned her head sideways to look inside. She had done this three times already, and showed no sign of losing interest. He couldn’t help but laugh as she careened past a fourth time and made a screeching halt to flash them a peace sign. Continue reading
Trees on a Hillside
The train lurched out of the tunnel and into the open air. The rich, lime-green of summer rice-fields carpeted the valley that spread suddenly before him in the slanting rays of the setting sun-the light-itself a visible thing: part of the scenery, more than illumination. Continue reading
Strolling
It all began with jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), a sidewalk table, and an unusually beautiful November day … Continue reading
