Funeral

There are many mental images I have from my aunt’s funeral. The box of Kleenex in the waiting room of the cemetery’s chapel. The white chairs under the tent set up for the graveside service. The black pantsuit of the funeral director. 

However, one image has not only stayed with me, but I think about it often. 

After my aunt’s casket had been lowered into the ground and everything was officially over, my mom wanted to put flowers on my grandma’s headstone. The only thing was, to get to it, you had to walk by my aunt's open grave, and if you didn't watch your footing, you could easily slip into it. 

Wanting to be helpful, I helped my mom negotiate the strip of grass beside the pit. When she got to where she needed to be, I stayed back because I wanted to give her privacy. 

As I waited, I looked into the hole. This was going to be the last time I saw my aunt in the physical world, I thought. I then turned my attention to the side of the pit, the area where the grass met the 90-degree drop-off, the place where life ended and death began. The grass was so green. It might have been extra thick, the way grass often grows in Florida. But it ended at the pit. 

And it is this image of the grass meeting the pit I often think of.

Cortland and Cornell

One Saturday afternoon during the winter of 2000, my mom telephoned me at my college dorm room. The call woke me up. I think I had gone out the night before and gotten drunk, though alcohol may not have been the only reason I was sleeping late. 

During my first semester of college I had been depressed. In addition to dealing with my own mental issues, I hadn't managed to make many friends. Because I often felt isolated and just plain bad, I often slept very long. My unhealthy sleeping habits even infected my roommate, Jake, because he began sleeping at strange times, too, and some of the other students in the dorm even began calling us vampires. 

Anyway, my mom called that afternoon to tell me that she had just gotten off the phone with Maureen Gladburg, the mother of my long-lost friend Brendan. Brendan had had a lot of behavioral issues when we were kids and was even something of a bully. I know my mom was not a big fan of how he sometimes talked to me. 

Anyway, Maureen had just given my mom a big update on Brendan, and my mom couldn't believe how things had turned out for him. 

She said that not only had Brendan gotten his act together in high school, he was now studying applied mathematics at Cornell University. This was doubly ironic because not only had I never thought that Brendan Gladburg would make it into an Ivy League school, but the Ivy League school that he was going to was one town over from my college, Cortland. In fact, at Cortland, we would sometimes make jokes  how “Cortland” sounded like “Cornell” but was obviously a very different school. 

After receiving this news about Brendan, I remember saying to my mom, "Well, at least I made it into college, and I'm going to try my best to make something of myself.” Her response was "You definitely still can."

Wasp nest

Here's something I wrote. I'm not going to give any background, but it's worth reading. Just trust me. 

For some reason, a totally random memory came to me. In one of my first apartments in Frankfurt, my bedroom led onto a balcony, and in the woodwork above it, there was a wasp’s nest. At first I was scared of the wasps and would be very mindful of them whenever I was out on the balcony. However, over time I got used to the black-and-yellow things and found myself often observing them. They proved fascinating. In fact, I can say they provided me with one of the most beautiful images I had ever seen. 

One afternoon, it felt like a storm was coming. The sky was gray and just had that menacing look. The only thing was, I didn’t know when it was coming. But amazingly, the wasps did. As the weather started to grow worse—with the sky becoming grayer and the wind beginning to pick up—more and more of the wasps started flying back to the nest. In fact, the number of winged creatures flying back to the nest was totally commensurate with the increasing intensity of the storm, so that when the rain finally began to fall and the thunder began to roll, all the wasps were already back home.

Tatiana Schlossberg essay

I found this essay, written by Tatiana Schlossberg, very, very moving. Tatiana was the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and she died at the end of 2025. This essay, which has several components to it, is mostly about her battle with the disease that ultimately killed her. 

Tears in Heaven

When I was in my teens, I took guitar lessons, and one day, while I was taking a lesson, I asked the teacher if he could show me how to play "Tears in Heaven." He said he could and immediately taught me how to play the opening riff. The riff wasn't that hard and playing it, even sometimes imperfectly, was very rewarding because what I was producing sounded very similar to what was on the record. Then came the verse, which was a little more difficult because Eric Clapton plays several fills. However, to motivate me, my teacher said, "Sure, we don't need to play these fills—they are tricky and the song would still sound great without them—but if Eric Clapton can play them, I like to think we can too.'"

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

I was in the locker room at the pool today, about to go swimming, and next to me was a guy who had just finished changing back into his street clothes. I took note of him because he was singing to himself. He was singing Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." It was kinda nice listening to him, but when he got to the chorus, here's how he sang it: 

"So goodbye Yellow Brick Road/Where the da da da da da da da. Ya can't bah bah da da da house/ I'm da da da da da." 

It made complete sense to me that this man didn't know all the lyrics. I mean, have you ever heard "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"? The chorus is super hard to make out. However, because I really like the song, I know the text by heart. 

Anyway, after I heard how this guy sang the chorus, I kept going back and forth with myself: "Should I tell him the lyrics? Should I just keep my mouth shut?" 

By now, he was looking at his phone, so I thought maybe the moment had passed. But then for some reason, I thought, "Nah, fuck it," so I turned to him and said, "Do you know what the lyrics actually are?" He looked up at me and smiled, and before I let him say anything else, I said, "So goodbye Yellow Brick Road/Where the dogs of society howl." 

He kinda of stopped me there and said, "What exactly is it? 'Growl'"? I shook my head and said: "Where the dogs of society howl." I then continued: "You can't plant me in your penthouse/I'm going back to my plough." 

"My what?" he said. "I didn't get that."

"My plough, like a farmer." 

He caught on immediately, "Ah,  my plough...like going back to the roots."

"Exactly," I said.

In the end, I was glad I said something. 

Branding

One pack of Bicycle Playing Cards costs $3.54. 

One pack of Bicycle Playing Cards with a Star Wars theme costs $12.92. 

The eye-popping discrepancy underscores the power of branding. There is basically no difference between the plain Bicycle Playing Cards and the pack with the Star Wars theme. 

Branding really bypasses logic. 

Just think about: The Star Wars cards cost nearly four times more what the plain cards cost. Imagine paying $30,000 for a gray Honda Civic versus paying $120,000 for that same Civic because it had a cool color.