On a need for validation, and how that translates to writing, acting, and making purchases with a credit card.

Inside the tailored coat of a banker beat the aching heart of an aspiring architect.

Okay, so what’s up with all the ghosts in your work?

I like playing along the borderlines of what’s remotely possible.

Ghosts are possible?

Absolutely. I was raised Catholic. We’ve got the über-ghost Himself.

Do you believe in luck? Fate? Donuts?

All of the above, especially donuts.

Could you expound on that, please?

If you insist. I guess I believe that fate can be somewhat flexible, that it can accommodate luck, perseverance, and buttermilk Krispy Kremes. Just don’t take any of these for granted.

These arrangements of empty chairs are what’s left of celebration, argument, meditation, sleep and revelation.  They huddle together like still animals in the cold.  From a chair beneath a plane tree, the round tracks of a cane disappear into the gravel. The single chairs are absent of their poets, readers and afternoon philosophers. Those side [...]

The economy is so bad, people are burning the small bills just to stay warm.

A night of Karaoke in Shantou, China.

We sat together in the back of my car for an hour and I did not kiss her. We sat together on her couch, watching something or another on the TV and I didn’t kiss her. We lay together in her bed for hours, not kissing. It seems we can spend our lives together, swallow [...]

Money apparently buys happiness. According to University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener, very rich people rate their level of life satisfaction substantially higher than do their impoverished counterparts. Adds Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick in England: “There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness.” The only remaining point of debate, then, [...]

An open letter to Julie, the girl who dumped me right after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded: Dear Julie, We dated briefly in the fifth grade, and on January 28, 1986, you broke up with me. We were sitting in the Presentation Area, adjacent the library, and we had just finished watching the Space Shuttle [...]