The thing is, though: survivalist prep is uniquely challenging in a New York City apartment. There are only so many gallons of Poland Spring I can cram into that cabinet above the fridge. When those run out, what do we do for drinking water? Once we finish the pasta, rice, and beans, how will we feed ourselves if the local stores quit stocking their shelves? Whatever food and water we can get our hands on will presumably be astronomically priced—but how will we pay for it once we run through all of our cash? Most of our assets are just numbers on a screen. If the screens go black, we’re effectively bankrupt until the power comes back on.
Some words seem to only have a grumpy, negative version. A person can be uncouth, unkempt and ruthless, but why can’t they be the opposite?
Several years ago, when I found myself writing a book for the first time, I made a routine out of constantly reading and re-reading Janet Malcolm’s work. A friend had suggested to me that in order to sustain myself through the production of some hundred and twenty thousand words, it would be helpful to find a lodestar or kindred spirit to accompany me through the project. This lodestar would be another writer, and it wouldn’t matter whether they were dead or alive. The goal would not be imitation but simply to choose someone whose rhythms, vocabulary, and intellectual preoccupations could make a place for themselves in the middle background of my own mind as I wrote—five hundred words each weekday (no excuses), one chapter a month.
A teaspoon is the precise size of childhood. An egg cup,
almost. Lid lifted off an egg. The happy inevitability of an egg
yolk. Breakfast happens before the body. Light full of small