Category: Uncategorized

                    Getting Jumped at Pelham Bay Station It all started when my cousin Richie punched some guy  in the face at the Mahopac fireman’s’ fair in Putnam County where I spent my teenage summers. Richie knocked this guy over the hood of a car in the parking lot. I don’t know how the argument started…

Our fifth floor apartment in the Bronx, at 1610 Mahan Avenue, had two bedrooms, a foyer, a kitchen, and a living room. It also had three closets. My father had his closet at the end of the foyer. Every article of clothing that he owned was in that closet. My mothers’ closet was where the…

It’s a May Saturday morning. The sun is streaming through the curtains of our bedroom on the fifth floor of 1610 Mahan Avenue in the Bronx. I’m 14 years old and it’s 1952.The guy who maintains the Indian museum cross the street is cutting the grass. Bruckner Boulevard, down at the end of Middletown Road…

By Frank Schmidt Well, it finally happened. After 54 years, Mom has to leave the apartment in the Bronx. My brothers and I are clearing it out. going through dresser drawers and closets that contain the artifacts of that other world we came from. We all grew up in the apartment. It’s really all we…

I saw the bright boys of certaintysell eternity in a browser tab. Not the math.Never the math.The meat around the math. The sleepy click.The fake smile in the support window.The bridge made of crossed fingers and “should be fine.”The admin key tucked under the digital doormat. O blessed ledger,cathedral of hash,you were not defeated—you were…

Frank said: What if life is not special at all? What if life is simply an inevitable thermodynamic fact? Claude said: That is a profound opening move, because it reverses one of our deepest intuitions. Most people think life is something that stands against entropy, a temporary rebellion against disorder. But your question suggests the…