Nature | the renaissance writer

remembering the graffiti man*

27 February 201624 March 2016 therenaissancewriter

John Trudell thought I was a stick in the mud because I wouldn’t let him smoke pot. Here’s the scene: On 13 November, 1999, I helped organize a concert for the Save the Peaks campaign—a hardscrabble effort to protect the San Francisco Peaks from a pumice mine expansion. These mountains are Arizona’s skyscrapers and a […] Read More

confronting meursault

6 June 20159 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

I was inspired to spin Rachid Taha’s Rock el Casbah (Rock the Casbah cover) when I started Kamel Daoud’s provocative novel, The Meursault Investigation, and I encourage you to try it out. It’ll get you in a desert state of mind, a revolution state of mind. Daoud’s novel, on a first reading, seems a cry against both […] Read More

we live under a sea

5 June 20156 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

The storm looms throwing electric darts cloud-skimming flowing into alleys like canyons leaving water behind to trace the contours of the earth. I look up, eyes on the heavens peering at the backlit thunderheads a shimmering grey the rest of the sky like the inside of a pearl. Try to stand tall and steady […] Read More

learning to walk

10 April 20159 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

I’m going forward, and at the same time, away. Away from the urban quotidian. Away from mis/conceptions I hold about my own life, or my career, or even about time. I’m moving now toward a noisy creek that’s draped in an emerald veil, an open vein of life-giving waters that spill over the skin of the desert. This is […] Read More