n+1 is a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times yearly. We post new online-only work several times each week and publish books expanding on the interests of the magazine.
When Joseph was two months old, we packed up our Maine apartment to drive back to Maryland, to a house we had barely lived in. Joseph’s age became a proxy for how long my mother had been dead.
I talked to a man wearing a sweatsuit with the Palestinian flag on it. He told me that his father came here in 1976. It’s ethnic cleansing, it’s an illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and what you’re seeing is people fighting after they’ve been backed into a corner, he said. He likened the struggle to South Africa and Algeria. It’s the same old imperialism and colonialism, he said.
For the first time in my life I would be an official roadie. I wasn’t merely in charge of the driving: I would also help build and dismantle, lift and position, carry and fetch armed with duct tape and a Swiss Army knife. My writing would be full of self-mockery and rich with funny observations about my wife. Moreover, having experienced the splendor of the gig, my dispatch would be transformed, alchemically, into an essay that contained a series of pointed, even revolutionary, observations about art.
The vibe was very West Coast: everyone looked like someone I’d played in a Seattle band with a decade ago. Cowboy boots and fleece, a lot of craft beer and sleeve tattoos, #vanlifers with fedoras and rainbow Pendleton blankets, earth-toned knitwear and dusty Chacos (the “pretty” kind with the toe loop), big Indigo Girls energy. I’ve been in New York too long; I don’t own clothes like this anymore.