The Big Bonk
I’ve hit a wall—not a real wall but an imagined one in the form of a computer screen capable of sucking up my soul, along with all my words.
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Riprap Retreat
The Gin and Tonic in my hand is sweating as am I. It’s after 5:00 p.m. and the sun is still blazing here in Oceanside, California.
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Dishwasher Dreams
“Eight years ago, I was standing behind there, washing dishes, not speaking English, an immigrant no one saw,” he told the crowd.
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Rock in the Casbah
A big fan of The Clash, I remember speeding down the 101 Highway with my friend Robin on my first-ever parent-free road trip.
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Composite Córdoba: Walled In, Walled Out
It’s the Saturday of Semana Santa—Holy Week—in the Spanish city of Córdoba. The place is packed with religious revelers here to witness the processions of the Catholic brotherhoods.
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Out in the Open
From the street, the Stonewall Inn isn’t much to look at. Some red brick topped by a plaster façade, punctuated by two arched doorways and four windows, one of which is rectangular and filled with a neon sign.
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Trauma Block
As I absorbed this tough news, I listened as my friend described the so-called dark wall her relative was trapped behind, rendering her all but unreachable.
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Shot Glass
As a structural element, walls have many uses. In addition to separating people and spaces, walls hold up roofs and provide a hiding place for electrical equipment and the occasional mouse.
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Stone Spirit Revival
I’m in the Hawaiian Islands this week for the Kauai Writer’s Conference that was taken online after I’d already booked my flight and lodging. So here I am working, swimming and also reading.
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The Hole in the Wall
The guidebook promised us the one place in all of West Berlin where no physical barrier existed between the two Germanys. And here it was. Wide enough to allow railcar passage, this singular gap in the famous Cold War all lay at the end of a wide Straße in the tiny West Berlin neighborhood of Steinstücken.
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Field of My Dreams
The field pictured above is a real place, located near the border separating the neighboring German states of Bavaria and Thuringia. I remember being weak in the knees as I snapped the shot. About five months earlier I’d pictured this place, while writing a scene for an MFA class in my tiny room at the Pod Hotel in New York.
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The Wall2Wall Project
Since early childhood, I’ve been preoccupied with walls. Imprinted in my earliest memory is an illustration of a boy on a swing peering over a wall. The picture sits alongside a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson aptly named “The Swing”. My mother, seated beside me on our nubby green couch, is reading aloud from A Children’s Garden of Verses.
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When Jon Crispin agreed to let me reprint some of these rare, vintage photos from Steinstücken I was elated. A former freelancer for the New York Times, among other notable publications and institutions, Jon’s documentary work has been widely exhibited by museums and art organizations, including the New York State Council on Arts, the New York State Museum, and the San Francisco Exploratorium. See Jon’s documentation of suitcases left behind by patients at the now-shuttered Willard Asylum in Willard, NY or find him on Instagram and on Twitter. To see Jon’s other work visit http://www.joncrispin.com/.