Resolution

I will become superstitious.
I will stuff secret meanings into
Ordinary places.
I will endow, imbue, animate, sanctify,
Making the simple stand for the sublime.
No more arid searching after truth;
I will make myself prehistoric,
Believing in signs and demons, and the angry spirits
That heave up the swallowing sea.
I will make sacrifices.
Burn a virgin, if need be.
Some scoff at prophecies that self-fulfill –
But what could be more elegant? And after all,
Belief in a false thing is a real thing –
A dangerous, beautiful, useful thing.
So let me bow to idols, tremble at symbols,
Decipher the unencrypted entrails of dead birds.
Let my lips mutter and my eyes roll back;
Let the cynics laugh their dry defeated laughter
While I, ridiculous, conquer the world.

Glad? Well ...

The books of Malcolm Gladwell are basically fact porn.

Happy New Year

Walking through Times Square the other night after watching the final performance of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the streets were still littered with New Year's confetti. Looking up, I could see it blowing off the nearby rooftops, spiraling down slowly like flat, overgrown snow. As I started down 42nd St., I turned back to get one last look at the ghostly flakes, and a working-class, red-haired, middle-aged man addressed me.

"It's still falling, isn't it?" he said. I agreed. "It'll be falling in a week still," he continued. "Seriously." I smiled. "Happy New Year," I said. And he said the same, and we both walked on.