Praise Be the Baker
Every morning about now, the smell from one of the two bakeries near my place wafts up on the morning breeze. Just did. Just now. And it reminds me of something, something safe, something joyful...
On Landscape, or The Satire of Ansel Adams
I can't help but think of poor Ansel Adams, the impotence of his work. How can you appreciate the mastery without lamenting the shortcoming of the medium? Maybe that's the point. Maybe he was a satirist, after all.
Bullet: The Genesis
I met Bullet Shih in the summer of 2002, we were both part of the same ragtag Bohemian circle of friends, he the painter, me the writer. I had no way to know that 23 years later, I'd be directing a film about him.
Spring Springs in Budapest
Soon the restaurants and bars along the Duna will open up, and the ones I'm talking about are the kind that have a small cottage for prepping food, surrounded by picnic tables and mismatched seating, string lights, umbrellas and awnings, places where if you drop a french fry it lands in dirt.
A Middling Winter
On another occasion recently, I took a stroll across the Árpád bridge and snapped this photo of the Danube. There's something particularly wintery about the scene, the way the clouds hover and throw the light of the Parliament back onto the surface of the river. The bony trees.