They tell you the city is where the life is. The jobs. The pulse. The “opportunity.” And maybe it is. But the first thing the city does now—before you learn the metro map, before you find the café that feels like yours, before your new badge stops being shiny—is invoice you for the privilege of existing within its radius.
Not for luxuries. For space. For air that doesn’t feel borrowed. … Read the rest
A man walks into a conversation with a statistic the way some people walk into a bar fight: not to learn anything, but to leave with a trophy. He doesn’t say “Hello.” He says, “Mississippi has higher GDP per capita than France and the UK.”
Pause for applause. Somewhere, a spreadsheet blushes.
The trouble is that GDP per capita is the kind of number that makes you feel informed while … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
I might be giving the game away if I tell you I’ve been married five times and now present myself as an authority on the best way to sustain a happy ‘holy’ matrimony. You’ll be forgiven for asking: How can this chronic nuptial fuck-up possibly have anything to say besides “Here is some advice you should immediately ignore”? It probably wouldn’t help if … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
“The world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel” – Horace Walpole
“Only the Lonely” was the signature song of a guy named Roy Orbison, a star in the early rock’ n’ roll era. Orbison died in 1988 of a heart attack at the age of 52. Songs are full of lonely guys; they were back … Read the rest
Content 12+ There are things in life we cannot control, forces that shape us long before we have words to resist them. The movement of the stars, the turn of the seasons, the hands of time pressing onward. Politics shifts, economies rise and crumble, leaders come and go, wars ignite and extinguish, yet the world, indifferent and ancient, continues in its rhythm. The tides do not ask our permission, and … Read the rest
