Excerpted from Cascade (Great Place Books, April 2024)
There is a starfish that sees with the surface of its body. The brittle star doesn’t have eyes defined by little globes cased in eyelids—its whole body sees. To see itself, then, is just to interact with the world, to move through it. I wish I could experience the world this way.
The boat rocks up and down. I slide from white plastic seat to boat floor, where I grip the metal above me, staring through the railing into the ocean. The water...
As Roman and I stroll through Central Park on the way to my book launch, the Soviet poet Marina Tsvetayeva gets up from a bench and walks right by us. She sports her signature short hair and severe bangs, as well as her dark eyes, prominent nose, and beguiling air of doom. I am not completely mad, yet—I know it’s not really her. She’s been dead for over seventy years, but I’ve been thinking...
I’m in a support group for monsters, loosely defined. Our aims swing wildly between reform and self-acceptance depending on whose turn it is to lead the meeting and what phase of our cycles we’re in—remorse, defiance, fixation, bloodlust etc.
Today, it’s my turn to share: “My name is Joe and I’ve been a vampire for 74 years,” I begin. “Twice as long as I was human.”
You’re supposed to introduce yourself in relation to your humanity...