Santa Cruz
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Joe at the Aquarium
I pushed him so he glided through the fish, the eels, the boxed-in worlds of blues.
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Otter
The emblem, not the animal, mattered. We swatted mosquitoes, made no pilgrimages to Vermont to see bears and moose. I wanted to get as close as possible to my potential animal totem.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #14: Altered States?
In my last column, the Muse inspired me to write about dreams. And since then, I’ve been thinking about other types of altered consciousness. As a guy who often hangs out with Catholic monks, and who practices “Will Rogers spirituality”—that…
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Art Undying, Georgia O’Beef Stew
Open mics, poetry contests, theatre prospects—a small “Art Bar” in Santa Cruz, California is using art, beer, and uniquely named food to fund local arts education. On its busiest days, the Tannery is a warren of studios featuring painters, sculptors,…
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Albums of Our Lives: Gillian Welch’s Time (The Revelator)
I knew I was a pretender, too, knew it in all the ways a twenty-six-year-old can believe that she is broken and that nobody else can see how badly.
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Long Live Hobos
In Santa Cruz, I had occasion to meet some hobos. Real or fake hobos: it was hard to make the distinction in a town so enshrined to the misfit ideal. There was a train bridge near the roller-coaster that you…
