Men in red vests enter in the wake of the crowd’s leaving,
their sneakers rustling hollow soda cups and corndog sleeves.
This is the dingy hush of half-eaten pretzels, half-empty
popcorn buckets. When the crew has finished clearing debris
In a long, low building with a tin roof, people from this village turn clamshells into buttons. Beyond the broken windows lie middens of clamshells, punctuated with precise and uniform holes. The gravel mixes with broken shells and thick, pale unfinished buttons.
Join us at the Brooklyn Book Festival, the “largest free literary event in New York City,” on September 18. Enjoy themed readings, panel discussions, and book signings, all at beautiful Brooklyn Borough Hall.
In Greece, people visit islands. There are a lot of islands to visit. They head for beaches, coastline, the sea, to lie on the shore and look out at the water. But to find an island, you should really look inland. The island is the thing behind you. Turn around.
On a small Cycladic island, a second home for me by marriage, I swelter by the beach. Idyllic, busy, and anonymous. A limited sense of context: a watery horizon; sand; shops, bars and restaurants. At 40°C in the shade, it’s all swimming costumes and ice cream and plastic toys.
Event Date:
Thursday, April 28, 2011 – 8:00 pm
Location:
Alumni House, Amherst College
Come celebrate the release of our first issue! Join us at Amherst College’s Alumni House on April 28th for drinks, music and brief readings by contributors Sabina Murray and Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller. The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 8:00 p.m. Click here for a map of the Amherst College campus.
By HOLLIE HARDY
First you have to have hair. This trend toward baldness negates the problem.
Once you have grown a luscious mane, gather images on your lion tongue: ripe peaches, sizzle of bacon, crisp campfire scent of an almost winter night, handful of rain or feathers or marbles, the details of sunset, and and fast cars. Weave your materials carefully. Remember that birds like shiny things. The colors and flavors you choose may affect the type of bird you lure into your hair-nest.
Event Date:
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 – 8:00 pm
Location:
Amherst, MA
Issue 01 of The Common ships to subscribers.
I grew up in a suburb. Sub-: substitute, subservient, suboptimal, subordinate, substandard. Suburb: aesthetically, morally, culturally beneath the urb. Suburb: lesser than, not quite, almost, near but far. Suburb: the middle sibling of American municipalities, the generic neighborhood, where sidewalks and landscaped parks abound, where street widths reflect the dimensions of the average minivan, where children wander through barometrically-controlled environments, ogling the mass-produced outfits from The Limited and The Gap, concocting fantasies about their future, properly-attired selves, when they will no longer dwell in such a substandard place, but will graduate to the real life, the unsubordinate life: the life of the city, the life of the urb.
By ROLF POTTS
By the time I arrived at the Guacara Taina nightclub, it was just short of midnight. The club was mostly empty, though this is a relative term when the disco in question sits in a huge underground cave that can comfortably fit 2,000 revelers. The subterranean climate proved a cool respite from the smothering June humidity of Santo Domingo, and there was a certain charm in the occasional flutter of bats while waiting in line for the toilet, or the ever-present danger of stumbling over stalagmites while fetching beers. I had been in the Dominican Republic taking dance lessons for just over two weeks, but this was the first time I’d ventured out to try my new skills in public.
I bend to earth. My fingers trace woodworm tracks along a beach log. I hold a frog in my hands and see patterns of mottled green. I’m looking for patterns. My Southeast Alaska landscape is woven on spruce baskets. On my walks, I’m like the ancient weaver who noticed a tree’s shadow reflecting on water. She moved her hands as if she weaved air. Later, with spruce roots between her fingers, she weaved the-shadow-of-a-little-tree on her basket. In her ancient Tlingit belief, the shadow of a tree is evidence of the spirit inhabiting the tree. The spirit is woven in shadow pattern, which becomes the “spirit of the basket.” The Lingít word aas daayí means tree bark, yet also describes the physical shell of a human being—aas daayí. In the Tlingit worldview, personhood is connected to the spirit of the trees, that is, people and trees share the same skin.
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