In the past few decades my name, Adrian, has become androgynous. The distinction used to be between my spelling, which was for boys and men, and “Adrienne” for girls and women. Often this distinction is maintained today, but often not. Combine the
If You Are Having Thoughts of Murder…
We live under such a barrage of public service announcements that they have become white noise. When a train comes to a grinding halt or my plane stands idly by the runway, I may hear an announcement only if I’m annoyed by the “any” in “We
Monkey Business
Here’s something I wrote when I was seven in one of my class exercise books that have miraculously survived the years: I have been to the seaside, Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. We stayed there for a week. We saw the only traffic lights on the
Sisyphus
Something terrible is always happening around the world. Many of us living in peaceful places can’t help but wonder at our good fortune while we seek to understand what has gone so wrong elsewhere. 1 Two mornings a week on my ninth floor terrace,
Theories and Other Whims: Eleven Poems
Here’s the last group of poems I expect to post. As always, the date is that of original composition, while the poems are presented in chronological sequence with the one exception of the last. 1. February 12, 1974 Although dated in the depths of
Kindness
The other evening, our building’s doorman announced that someone had dropped off the dehumidifying case for my hearing aids. This post is an attempt to explain why a normally unmemorable act was poignant. In the 1990s, I resisted an