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Camp (It’s a Mitzvah!)

It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease.

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In Color

Boxes in the trunk of the Toyota Corolla Azure her mother sold when they got to the city. Their neighbor played “Purple Rain” every morning. Blue stripes on the city bus. Blue Man Group in Union Square. Public school, plastic chairs. First test. “Sorry kid,” when Natasha’s teacher handed her a blue pen.

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Seule

Ms. Zeller told us, “if you scrunch all your fingers and toes and hold it for about ten seconds and then release, that’s kind of what an orgasm feels like.” Glancing down I saw twenty pairs of feet, all wearing the same green knee high socks and black shoes, lift slightly off the floor as we all clenched our toes.

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Troubled Sleep Interview

There are people who talk about the Internet or reading PDFs, but the thing is, those people are all wrong. That’s the great truth of it; no matter what happens with smartphones, or streaming TV, or people ordering books off of Amazon, I think the written word is here to stay. People will always like to read physical books. For anyone who is thinking about a career in writing, there will always be demand for that and there will always be opportunities for that.

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Frijoles Negros al Indios

But you cannot pick around home. Maybe your home, but not my home. I can throw the doors wide–and often do so with open arms–but to refuse a beam–whether it be a corpulent bird or a hi hat trill–is to cripple such a font to its foundation. For it comes from the depths of my soul, indivisible and not mine, but inherited slowly over time with no recipe to speak of, only a dance rediscovered over and over with folkish steps, a memory recognized when lived out with abandon. I cannot choose what bubbles up from this stew.

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Circles and Rectangles

I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he is struck by the Seurat painting, except there’s no John Hughes movie soundtrack in the back, and I fail to fall into the painting the way Cameron does. The pressure to discern meaning increases when other people are nearby. I’m afraid that they see something I can’t.