Who are you?
It’s only when I crossed 40 that I realized I should do the thing I love the most, to write. So you could say it’s only since the last few years that I have no hesitation in calling myself a writer.
What do you write?
At the moment equal doses of fiction and nonfiction. Some […]

I have an op-ed piece running in today’s International Herald Tribune, which is online here: Speed up or get out of the way.

I recently met someone from the country.
This person had always lived in the country. Real country. Cows, vegetable gardens, tree chopping, no running water.
We began talking about country life versus city life, as you do. He had not been in the city for more than a few days and already he missed the country. We […]

In his Travels in England Nikos Kazantzakis talks about “rhythm.”
“Τι είναι λοιπόν ρυθμός; Μια κεντρική κίνηση όλο αρμονία, που κυβερνάει το στοχασμό και την πράξη μας.”
“What is rhythm, then? A single central movement, all harmony, that governs our goals and actions.”
My first response to this is that Kazantzakis’s “rhythm” is equivalent to will. To a […]

Love - romantic, passionate, erotic love - is often portrayed, understood, or lived as a type of madness. Scientists reveal chemical imbalances, psychologists classify it with various disorders, but while reading an old interview with Martha Nussbaum called “The Ethics of Literature” (sorry, no reference, it just exists as a dog-eared photocopied text found in […]

Fame achieved after death has often/always been associated with a sort of divine genius. An artist/poet/writer recognised after death is one who was ahead of his/her time, who produced work of extreme and timeless importance, who could only be understood and appreciated by future, more enlightened generations.
But I always felt this a consolation prize. The […]

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I would like to creep back into the blogosphere once again - after a five-month period of utter silence - and announce that my silence was philosophical. I would like to say that words, that language - well, my words, my language - could not show […]

Who are you?
I am a fiction writer, visual artist, cross-dresser, palm reader, cook, and traveler of inner and outer worlds. When you travel to spots like Siberia and pack a sex toy in your luggage, you have to be prepared. The woman gate officer in Kyzyl waved my magic wand in the air and asked […]

Julian Barnes writes in The Guardian about going back to read Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, because the play was about to open at the National Theatre. He finds that 150 years after it was written, the novel — about two lovers who kill a husband and by killing the husband kill their own desire and […]

After Rick Moranis’ Op-Ed in the NYTimes, November 22, 2006
The average American home now has more television sets than people … according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said. — The Associated Press, Sept. 21.
I HAVE two kids. Both are […]