Essays | Page 31 | The Common

Time Shadows

September 27, 2012 Essays

A few months ago, while walking home from the subway in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I noticed a change in the sidewalk — four of the white cement paving stones had been replaced with darker, bluish-gray stones.There had been a lot of construction in the area, and at first I thought they were simply new stones, not yet faded to match the surrounding sidewalk. But when I got closer, I saw they formed an artwork, engraved with the silhouette of a young, leafless sapling. The etching was meant to approximate the shadow of a nearby street tree, although that tree, now in full leaf and several feet taller, was throwing its noticeably longer shadow in the opposite direction.

Elsewhere, in Jordan

September 24, 2012 Essays, In House

By JENNIFER ACKER

“In House” is a weekly column featuring trawlings and reflections from our editors.

Two hundred years and one month ago, Swiss adventurer-scholar Johann Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, forgotten about by Westerners since the Crusades. Described in an 1845 poem by Brit John William Burgon as the “rose-red city half as old as time,” Petra was a gloriously wealthy city with an ingenious water system whose 1,000-year history and acres of archeological treasures are being excavated by a crack team at Brown University. A profile of the city in Smithsonian magazine convinces that Petra deserves its place as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, alongside Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

September 20, 2012 Essays

By V. HANSMANN

“Push it ahead of you.”

With my fingertips, I shove my hardhat in front of me, while I thrust my body forward with my toes. A hundred yards of solid planet hang above me. Though dank anxiety brews in my core, my extremities are working flawlessly, independent of my consciousness. Be still, monkey mind. Now would be a supremely impractical time to have an out-of-body experience.

Writing in Place with Robert Earle

September 17, 2012 Essays

By ROBERT EARLE

Backyard

My writing room is on the second floor of our house in Arlington, Virginia. Sometimes I write on a computer located in a double-wide closet where I have a built-in desk and bookshelves. At other times I write at a desk overlooking our back yard; from there I see a small stone Buddha, a split rail fence between us and the neighbor, and a swath of trees that descends along Donaldson Run across Military Road to the Potomac River a mile from here.

Annals of Mobility: An Introduction

September 16, 2012 Essays, In House

By SONYA CHUNG

Click here to read more about “Annals of Mobility,” a monthly column here at The Common.

First day of class: after a writing exercise that helps break the ice – 10 minutes of “put someone you don’t know very well in a situation of physical duress, and write the scene in first person” (a few students share out loud, while we listen and then comment)—I ask the students to go around the room and say their name, major, and “where they’re from.” I use air quotes, and they all laugh, knowingly. We all understand that the question is fraught, and complex. In this room of twelve (including me), a college classroom in New York City, only two offer a simple answer to the question: I am from Dallas, Texas. I am from Atlanta, Georgia. Third and fourth generation, respectively. Two out of twelve.

From the 17th Floor: First Impressions

September 13, 2012 Essays

By JENNIFER ACKER

These days, you arrive in a new place from a great height. Brief glimpse of patterned land, sometimes sea, then trundling along skyways until finding your way down to the ground and the transport available there. Eventually, you make your way to the heart of the place, where you can approach it from eye level.

Building

Everyone Eats Potatoes

September 11, 2012 Essays

By ELLEN GOLDSTEIN

Path and house Photo by Carol H. Goldstein

My father was not a farmer. His great grandparents—fleeing the increasingly violent antisemitism of the Russian empire during the late nineteenth century—left Minsk and settled in rural Indiana. They opened a general store in a town so isolated that the few Jews who lived there worshipped on Sunday. The family moved to Indianapolis, where his father and uncles opened a hardware store. As a child, the closest my father came to nature was the thin line of trees separating his house from the neighbor’s.

Road Trips & Head Trips

September 10, 2012 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

“In House” is a weekly column featuring trawlings and reflections from our editors.

It’s the end of the summer and we’re all digesting a season of vacations. Here’s a sampling of reflections from around the web, from armchair dreamers to day trippers to professional travel writers:

At Killing the Buddha, Ben Brazil reflects on the pleasures and pitfalls of searching for larger meaning in the serendipitous moments that occur while traveling: “Travel as a spiritual practice, can distort at least as much as it reveals, and not only because its magic involves wealth and privilege.”

Exclusive Video Debut: James Salter on France, a Sport and a Pastime, and “The Erotic In Everyone’s Heart”

September 4, 2012 Essays

By JAMES SALTER

Introduced by PAUL YOON

September Love

Paul Yoon on James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime

September. It seems these luminous days will never end. I first encountered those lines over ten years ago in New York City. I was living near the United Nations building. It was late evening. I was on the fifth floor of a high-rise and through my windows I could see the sky’s reflection against other windows. I felt lucky to be able to see the image of the sky from my apartment. I felt lucky to be in New York. I believed I had figured things out. Which is to say I was young. I could count the amount of friends I had on one hand and I was happy about that. I enjoyed being alone. I preferred the company of imagination. It was what, in the end, seduced me, more than any person during that time. And for a few nights, what lived with me was the narrative of Phillip Dean and Anne-Marie Costallat, in faraway France, in a world so very different than mine; and yet their story felt, page by page, more alive, more vast, more sensual and more true than my life could ever feel or become. And rather than being depressed by this, I was elated. Joyful. Celebratory. I paced my apartment. I looked out the window at other windows. I went to work and came back and returned to the pages.

Dan McGuire

April 1, 2012 Essays, Issue 03, Issue 03 Essays

By PATRICK STINE

Dan hands me his list as I get off the elevator, still fifteen minutes from the start of clinic. The paper is polished and worn, having been folded twice and in and out of his wallet for half a century. There is ink from at least four ball-point pens on the page. The edges are frayed, almost archival. He’s a little smug, like he just delivered key evidence in a trial. He lifts his chin and looks off to the side, like De Niro. A slight nod of the head. 

All posts tagged: Essays

Time Shadows

Elsewhere, in Jordan

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Writing in Place with Robert Earle

Annals of Mobility: An Introduction

From the 17th Floor: First Impressions

Everyone Eats Potatoes

Road Trips & Head Trips

Exclusive Video Debut: James Salter on France, a Sport and a Pastime, and “The Erotic In Everyone’s Heart”

Dan McGuire

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