Thinking About Macaws The first time I rode in John’s brown minivan was on an afternoon in late August during our freshman year of college. There was a coffee-flavored e-cigarette in the cup holder between the driver’s seat and shotgun. I hardly noticed it at first, since I was too intent on listening to The Smiths, our favorite band. As soon as I got in the car, I took John’s CD case out of his glove compartment and started flipping through it. “Put in Louder Than Bombs,” John said. “It’s their best album.” I did. After “Is It Really So Strange?” started playing, I noticed the e-cigarette for the first time and asked John what it was. He explained, then offered me some. When I refused, John picked it up and began inhaling deeply. My…

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THE SPOT This is my spot. It’s been mine since I was a boy. The water’s choppy and the current’s swift, but I love it. This is where I come when I want to be alone or to think—or to fish, just for the fun of it, or sometimes just to drink my whiskey in peace. Of course, if I come out here and I find some joker’s got it, then I get upset, so I have to keep an eye on it. If someone gets too close when I’m out here, that’s just as bad. This is a mile offshore at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where the James River flows into the Chesapeake Bay and meets the Atlantic Ocean at Hampton Roads. It’s right on the edge of the channel, at the drop off, where…

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White Noise Like the undulating highways in a Texan landscape, —The cacti, lizards, dead soil, dry vegetation and brown hills in a dusty rolling flat plain on a harsh mid-day, providing no immediate relief to weary eyes— Heaving deserts of Sahara and relentless Thar, harbouring skeletons under its shifting dunes. Unending galleries of Palace of Versailles with pieces from past, The long passages that easily tire the tourists with handy cams. The unfathomable dark depths off the Atlantic ocean thrashing about its spiked tail Churning its bed and upsetting weeds And the innards of a labyrinthine Dharavi slums, Sweating and weaving bags and leather goods for the folks Searching for cheap goods that cost five times in nearby malls. Middle-class families remain silent and apart; While eating on the same glass table filled with fruits,…

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