Essays | Page 35 | The Common

Under the Skin, Pt. 2

April 30, 2013 Essays

Click here to read Part 1 of this essay.

The sprawling state nursing home is in a dreary area on the edge of the city. Arline tells me that schoolchildren often visit the home to entertain the residents, and the president makes appearances. A nun gives us a tour of the cafeteria, the many patios and balconies, the nursing stations. Although the buildings are institutional, grey walls and grey tile, the home offers tiny single rooms with private baths — Nora wouldn’t have roommates to disturb — and nurses on staff around the clock. The price is right; less than Nora’s pension. Arline tears with relief as she thanks the nun for her help. The nun directs us to the social worker’s office.

Reading Place: Secrets, Poetry, Solace

April 29, 2013 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

Slate has a new travel blog celebrating strange and beautiful places around the world. Recent entries include a tunnel of flowers, a theater that has been remodeled into a bookstore, and a movie theater that floats in a lagoon.

Speaking of mysterious places, Stonehenge is seeking a general manager. Details at The Atlantic.

In New York City, where I live, I’ve always been fascinated by the High Bridge, a pedestrian bridge that links the Bronx and Manhattan. It’s been closed for decades but will open up next summer. The New York Times profiles the High Bridge neighborhood, in light of these upcoming changes.

Under the Skin

April 23, 2013 Essays

By ALLISON GREEN

Saturday, December 20

When I first meet my mother-in-law Nora, she is naked and skeletal, with a head-to-toe case of scabies. We don’t know yet about the scabies, but standing in the room at the nursing home, we can tell something’s wrong. Arline, my partner, hasn’t seen her mother in ten years.

An attendant brushes in past us. She had instructed us to wait in the entrance, but Arline’s friend Alma, sensing deception, led us down the front hallway and along a corridor until she found Nora’s room. The attendant waves us out; she will get Nora ready. The room holds a dresser with missing drawers and three single beds; they have dirty bedspreads and no sheets. A small print of a lily hangs near the ceiling on a wall as scarred as Nora’s legs.

A Loophole in Time (Part 2)

April 16, 2013 Essays

By JUDITH HERTOG

Click here to read Part 1 of this essay.

In Taiwan I taught English at an evening college. I’d dress up in my suit and pumps and teach business English to office workers and software engineers. But in the daytime, I’d put on my hiking clothes, tie my infant daughter in her baby-carrier on my belly, and hike up the cemetery mountains near our apartment. The cemeteries formed a large island of green amidst the urban sprawl of Taipei. After just a few minutes of hiking, the city noises would fade away. The blare of car horns, the rumble of trucks speeding over highway bridges, and the squeaking of metro carts were muffled by the bamboo forest. Blue iridescent butterflies as big as my hand rested on red hibiscus flowers, and I could imagine I had entered a secret world hidden within the city. I rarely met other people. When the dead are unhappy, they are said to turn into hungry ghosts. So the Chinese stay away from cemeteries. But I’m not afraid of the dead. In the stillness among the graves, where tree roots envelop old bones and flesh turns into earth, death doesn’t seem so terrible.

Annals of Mobility

April 15, 2013 Essays, In House

By SONYA CHUNG

The dog is 13 this year; that’s 91 in human years. He’s pretty spry, all things considered, but the changes are noticeable and frequent as of late: he is slower on our walks, resists the longer distances, has trouble with stairs and with standing up or lying down. We’ve just invested in a ramp for the car. I’m reluctant to subject him to long car rides anymore, given how stiff he is afterwards from limited space and dehydration. This is the dog who’s traveled cross country twice, and up and down both coasts several times.

From the 17th Floor: Rajasthan, For Example

April 12, 2013 Essays

By JENNIFER ACKER

To reach Kumbhalgarh, one drives two hours north from the charming lake city of Udaipur through the Aravalli Mountains. Until the end, the climb is gradual, and the countryside is rock-strewn and brown, save for the flames of the forest, the shocking orange flowers blooming from dead-looking branches. (When the rains come, the flowers will fall, and the trees’ wide green leaves will be used for plates.) But just when the roadside rhythms have slowed to match the bullock-pulled wheels drawing water from the wells, a throng of pink and orange and yellow saris jump into the road and halt the car. It’s the week of Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, and these women extract a few rupees in exchange for a fierce bit of dancing.

A Loophole in Time (Part 1)

April 9, 2013 Essays

By JUDITH HERTOG

When I was four years old, my father decided it was time for me to learn my address and phone number, so I’d be able to identify myself and find my way back if I ever got lost. He taught me the following ditty:

Changing Places: Mining Mongolia

April 1, 2013 Essays, In House

By MELODY NIXON

I hadn’t come to Mongolia seeking an education in the politics of development, but the signs of rapid, double-edged growth were everywhere. In Bayan-Olgii, the westernmost city, a huge entourage of Western foreigners driving foreign vehicles tore into the yurt camp where I stayed one night. They shook the felt walls of the camp with their shouting and drinking and ramen noodle-making, and the next morning did burn outs in the gravel driveway and honked as they left, showering pebbles over the camp owners’ barelegged children.

Around the town of Bayan-Ollgi sat multitudes of great, hulking tourist vehicles, resting at roadsides like over-fed weight lifters. They were protected by new, fat tires, for the sand, and strapped to their roofs and sides were shiny water and petrol cans, spare tires, tool kits, maps and jacks – all the accouterments of a military reconnaissance mission. I had the strong impression of being in an invaded country, watching a civilian-clothed army loot stores for bread and toilet paper.

On the Near-Future Novelist: Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich

March 29, 2013 Essays

By SCOTT GEIGER

In two sequential hurricane seasons, the Earth has mounted two solid runs at (re)producing the plot of Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow. It’s good Rich’s second novel found print this spring. After Irene and Sandy, there’s this spooky feeling that it’s only a matter of time before greater disaster strikes.

Collecting Time

March 26, 2013 Essays

By NAILA MOREIRA

Today, I am setting boots to snow. In my hands I hold a pair of shiny new binoculars. They’re my first new pair since the very first I bought, at age 12, with my $100 of babysitting money. For twenty years I carried those, and the trusty little things never failed me. These new ones cost a little more, yet even with their bright lenses, I’m thwarted by a golden-crowned kinglet. The tiny bird nips from one branch to the next, too quick to view for more than an instant as it seeks some minuscule source of nourishment among the needles.