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Mesa, who is thirteen, began inventing in grade school. 

Time to pick berries. This strain (pink when ripe
instead of black) surprises me each August,
although I should be used to it by now.

It’s been almost forty years since I bought an image of Sri Ganesh, the elephant-​headed Hindu god, from a street vendor in the Chor Bazaar—​the Thieves’ Market—​in Mumbai, which at that time was still Bombay. I’ve had the picture...

The trick in producing a spiritual memoir spurred by disease is circumventing the fact that you have become a cliché: Of course you discovered or rediscovered your god during a grievous bout with cancer—doesn’t everyone?

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.

The Faroese are a storytelling people, with ancestries tracing back to Nordic and Irish lines and a history etched in bloody Icelandic sagas. For centuries, fishing has been a pillar of the Faroese livelihood and economy.

In the halls of Pigalle, juxtaposition is not intimacy. 
Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge Moulin
Red—Louise the Glutton spread high in her kick, 

In Herero dress, there is an emphasis on construction; the sensuality is powerfully present below.

They had never seen these neighbors. Whoever lived on the far side of the wooded area were strangers to them. There was no occasion for the husband and the wife to drive on West Crescent Drive, which wasn’t easily accessible from the cul-...