This past February, I hired a cab for a pandemic-fatigued trip with a friend to the Himalayan hills in Himachal Pradesh, down the Old Manali road. It was a drowsy afternoon, the summer heat landing thick on the windows. My friend and I drifted in and out of sleep as our driver wound along circuitous roads. Listening to old Hindi songs, I started counting the Semal trees on the roadside, perched on the hills. Also called silk cotton trees, they blossom at the end of winter: leafless trees holding vibrant clutches of big red flowers.
1.We’ve been here twenty-six days, seven of us and the dog, and everyone needs a haircut. When we left New York for my in-laws’ farm in early March, we imagined we might be gone a week or two, and that at least in a rural area we could main [...]
It is rare to walk through empty streets in downtown Washington, DC, in broad daylight. Yet this past spring, when it seemed as if every living thing had leapt into a void, I learned that what you see and how you see it changes in a relatively unpeop [...]
1.My wife said she would buy the flowers herself (the Dalloway meme come nearly full circle), walking out with a mask and gloves from the kitchen drawer. She returned with a bunch of tulips of an unusual shade of pink and orange.We live in a sm [...]
1.Had anyone heard from Ana? She always answered her phone, but today wasn’t answering for me.She’s fine, her friends said when I called one after another. Like nearly everyone else in Barcelona, Ana didn’t leave the apartment often. But [...]
0 Comments