2024-11-21 08:00:00
Roden Readers — The first memory I have of Enrique Allen is from the campus of Stanford. He had just graduated from the d.school and was teaching part-time. We were about to start working together. He was all bounding lightness. That’s the first image: Jumping, huge bright smile, long black hair, wide open face, totally open heart. Bounding lightness. The lightness stood in contrast to his bigness as a human; not hefty, he was just a tall dude with the broadest of broad shoulders and a lot of muscles.
2024-11-09 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from Kuwana, a post-town along the Tōkaidō where I’m about to hop on a boat and sail across the Nagoya Bay as part of this little tour. But I’m writing these words from a kissa called Saboten (Cactus). A place that’s been around for fifty-seven years (!!!). It’s a bit grimy. A bit worn in. (What isn’t after fifty-seven years?) But it’s all Shōwa, and I’m choosing this place over a Tully’s just down the road for a few reasons, and it’s in these reasons that kissas have value, the loss of which is pretty unfortunate.
2024-11-08 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers — I’m on the Tōkaidō again, the road connecting Kyoto and Tokyo that I walked back in May (and walked previously in November 2020), with my buddy John. We’re driving it (GASP — the heresy! Don’t worry — he walked the whole thing forty-three years ago, I’ve walked it twice; driving it is actually proving to be interesting (collapsed spacetime) and strangely exhausting (sitting most of the day)) and doing little, relaxed, pop-ins to various spots that can be difficult to enjoy slowly when you’re knocking out 40+ kilometers of walking a day (like I was in May).
2024-11-01 08:00:00
Roden Readers — I slammed my ballot down and shoved it into an EMS international airmail envelope and gleefully paid thirty freggin’ bucks or so to get that sucker to my utterly blue state knowing damn well that that vote won’t tip the scales in any meaningful way. And yet. And yet — AND. YET. — I wanna be on that ledger. Goddamn, you bet I want to be on that ledger.
2024-10-23 08:00:00
Roden Readers — Hello! After a last horrible gasp of infinitely-lingering-summer on Saturday here in Tokyo (30C, humid) I think — dare I say it and curse it? — I think something like “fall” might be here. That said, I just got back from walking England where the weather was so aligned with my DNA (this must be a thing) I felt all the cells in my body cry out in joy when the cold and the wet hit the system.