You are currently viewing the stories for “February 2002.”
Mario is a white African of Portuguese descent. In New York some people tell him, "I didn’t know white people could be from Africa." When they say this, he shakes his head. "Americans are so ignorant!" he says. "They don’t know about anything outside their own country." Mario has come to New York from Mozambique, where I live now. We [...]
Peggy Darlington has always loved the New York City subway. As a little girl, she rode the trains frequently, and when she wasn’t on a train, she played “train” in her bedroom. One day, Darlington’s parents ordered her to play with dolls. After finding that she had put the dolls on pieces of cardboard to shuttle them around, they finally [...]
Late last year the 78-year-old filmmaker and archivist Jonas Mekas debuted his new diary film. The title, awkward but precise, is, "As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty." Its running time is around five hours, so it can only play once in an evening. On the first night of its run, Mekas held a little [...]
My class started the fall semester in the beautiful rooms of newly renovated Fiterman Hall, the south annex of Borough of Manhattan Community College, and finished in a trailer on West Street across from the barge port where trucks dump debris from the World Trade Center. "Have a good weekend and keep up with your reading," I said to my [...]
About a week after the WTC attack we began to hear weeping from the apartment next door. It came to us in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping, a small, very private sound that forced its way into my thoughts until I found myself lying awake listening to it. Its volume rose and fell, as weeping usually [...]
Newer Entries »