Posts by Benjamin
How To Change The World
If, as my former bandmate, once sang “World’s change in the belly of an insect,” then universes transform in a matter of years. Little wonder, then, that I should comment to Abbi this weekend that I can’t remember a period of transformation as radical as the last five years. Five years ago, I was an…
Read More“Mister Rogers & Me” Update
In the event you haven’t checked in on my other website, “Mister Rogers & Me,” lately, there’s a quite a bit going on. For starters, we’ve relaunched it. Of course, the site’s relaunch was timed to coincide with today’s publication of the Nantucket Film Festival schedule. “Mister Rogers & Me” has two official screenings: Friday,…
Read MoreBuilding A Mystery
For a second there, the juxtaposition of my ragged, fourteen-foot UHaul barrelling up the well-coiffed upper reaches of Park Avenue was kind of awesome. Traffic was light. The gas pedal was heavy. Midtown was in the rear-view. And there was funk on the radio. What’s more, my heart was full of freshly-minted confidence. Overnight, I’d…
Read MoreCity Island
It took me less than an hour back in the city to spot a dead body. I opted to shake of my sixteen-hour commute from Yemassee, SC, to New York, NY, on Amtrak’s Silver Meteor last week with a bike ride (inspired secondarily by a rapidly approaching triathlon in July). I pedaled my Cannondale north…
Read MoreThe Silver Meteor
For 1600 miles and thirty hours this week, Abbi and I sat reading, writing, and resting as Amtrak’s Silver Meteor ushered us roundtrip from New York City to Yemassee, South Carolina. It was an experience. Our 6′ x 4′ sleeper room was pure, NASA-age innovation. The sink folds down. The toilet folds up. The top…
Read MoreTo Do (Or, The New Normal)
Suffice to say that the twelve miles I ran from the base of the Manhattan Bridge to and twice-around Prospect Park was the easy part. It dawned on me deep within the fluorescent-lit walls of Ikea just a few hours later to Tweet, “I am in hell.” But I thought better of it on account…
Read MoreThirty Thousand Sunrises
If a guy’s really lucky, he sees some thirty thousand sunrises. This fact dawned on me as I turned eastward on 86th Street the other morning. The sun burst bright-ornage through the pale-green leaves as I jogged across East End Drive and I thought, “These are finite. Enjoy ’em.” The average life expectancy for a…
Read MoreInto The East
Abbi and I moved from West 56th Street and Tenth Avenue to East 71st and First this weekend. To most, this would seem a simple, two mile, two zip code, cross-town move. Which would be true. But man, what a difference two zip codes can make. New York neighborhoods are rife with generalities, none more…
Read MoreMoment Of Zen: Litchfield Beach
Litchfield Beach sits just south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a broad and flat stretch of sand at the center of Long Bay. I rose before dawn to greet the sunrise there, hit the sand, and turned north towards Murrell’s Inlet. The waves were soft and low, the water grayish-blue. The sun peaked over the…
Read MoreSomething To Say
It wasn’t until somewhere around Christopher Street that I realized that Thursday night’s Rockwood Music Hall set was littered with references to breaking silence, speaking up and being heard. From “Giving Up The Ghost” (“It’s impossible to argue / It’s impossible to scream”) to “Live Forever” (“There’s nothing left here to say”), “St. Anne (Of…
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