A surprise piece of news this morning: I received notice I’d been selected as a finalist in the 2015 Maine Literary Awards Nonfiction Short Works category. The excerpts below – that made up the submission – are part of a larger piece called The Christmas Letters. Some of you are familiar with another excerpt from […]
Tag Archives: Adam Nathan
June
02
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #46 Bennie and the Jets, Elton John
posted by Adam Nathan
Warm June applause explodes and sparkles on the brick cobblestone. We are drenched to the bone in liquid helium, but we have not yet floated out of the Columbia University in the City of New York Stadium. * She’s got electric boobs, a Mohawk suit, You know I read it in a magazine… Tony […]
May
04
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #47 – Love Is in the Air, John Paul Young
posted by Adam Nathan
We were identified to the group as guys that wanted to be cool long after high school was over or something to that effect. The trainer told us we were to find, borrow, or purchase pink ballerina tutus and white t-shirts before we came back the next morning.
Mad Men Predictions through New Year’s 1970
posted by Adam Nathan
Melanie and I spent date night on Saturday having sushi and plotting out the major developments of Mad Men between now and the end of the show – which we believe runs through next season. We were watching “Sunday’s” episode last night and she scolded me for not posting them earlier because – we believe […]
May
01
The Book: Walking Backwards
posted by Adam Nathan
To get to the heart of any spiritual journey, one must understand what is at stake for the story’s hero and what is to be surrendered. All true spiritual journeys are tales of loss, and this pilgrimage is no exception. * I’m currently working with Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency on the marketing […]
March
16
Robert Frost
posted by Adam Nathan
Because if we have a God at all then I’m quite certain He is a subtle, almost poetic God, a cool, Vermont, Robert Frost of a God, looking up from His desk and watching the wind and snow through His hoary farmhouse window. I see Him sipping His tea carefully and then setting it down […]
January
23
The Desert Angel
posted by Adam Nathan
I’m only a few late-night conversations from realizing everything I tell you is rubbish. I’m a year out from wishing I hadn’t written anything down. I’m up to wondering if I’m not a blind man who saw, but a blind man who had a dream of seeing.
December
13
The Well-Tempered Songbook: #49 – Happy Xmas (War Is Over), John Lennon
posted by Adam Nathan
I didn’t like his pasty skin or his circular wire glasses. His long, unkempt hair formed two crescents down both sides of his face, and I didn’t know why anyone would wear their hair to make it look ugly.
December
06
My Father
posted by Adam Nathan
It’s as if he thought his children would be strangers he would get to know, by and by, from across some agreeable paternal divide, from over the upper edge of the New York Times, or through the rear view mirror angled cleverly into the backseat.
November
17
First Kiss
posted by Adam Nathan
If you had to watch all the first kisses of your entire life replayed on a videotape you’d really start to notice the problems piling up. Maybe you have a better reel than I do, but without the soft head rush of a good kiss to mask over the problems, the issues really start to […]
November
11
Scorpios
posted by Adam Nathan
We were born a day apart, on November 15th and November 16th, and if you’ve studied astrology for even half an hour you know that Scorpios barely stand a chance with any of the other signs let alone with each other.
October
24
Photographs and Memories
posted by Adam Nathan
An image of a man and his things – his precious, precious things – an image viewable only at a great distance, from some vast outer space of feeling, from the vacuum of gain and loss, from the breathtaking cosmos of memory with all its twinkling stars of ephemera.
October
23
On the Camino
posted by Adam Nathan
I don’t think Anyone’s out there listening to my nano-problems, certainly not my boot problems or my I’m writing a book problems or my I’m failing a week into the pilgrimage and boo-hoo, it will be an artistic and personal disaster. Oh, tears in heaven! It’s absurd on the face of it. What God would […]
