Category: The Halcyon Days
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On Life Imitating Fiction Imitating, Reifying the Abstract Transactions of Life
Below are three paragraphs that I had squirreled away in the Orphans folder. I like the idea so much I’m currently contacting professors in the music department at UChicago to see if I can do this as an independent study to render fiction real… And to fulfill the ridiculous A-M-D Core requirement. ——— Consider his…
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On the Killing of Brain Cells
I don’t really understand the appeal of college parties. I found myself at one last night/this morning. It was what I expected: crowded, perspirant, and loud. Drunk for the first time in their lives, they waddle, stagger and shout. The standard male greeting, “Whatdup”, elicited responses ranging from “Shit… […] …my fucking face is tingly…
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Twenty-four thousand, seven-hundred fifty-five :: Or, “On the Pleasures and Sorrows of Returning to School”
Over this past summer, I’ve seen and done and learned many thjngs. I’ve visited exotic and not so exotic locales, read over a dozen books, became more involved with an entrepreneurship organization—the first whose mission statement I can actually stand behind—and, most pertinent to the readers of The Halcyon Days, published a total of 24,755…
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On Visiting Oxford: a Pilgrimage
I’ve been up to a lot since I posted my piece on dog walking. I’ve since been to Istanbul and Rome, and my brain’s been a little slow to process everything it and I’ve experienced. On this last leg of my journey, in London, I decided to visit Oxford yesterday to avoid Underground and street…
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How to get in great shape, get a comprehensive education from the world’s best institutions, make friends, and earn almost $75k… All in less than a year!!!
Lately, I’ve been asked “What are you going to [when you are] out of college?” The answer to this question is “Probably something in finance, and venture capital or PE in particular.” Then I follow this up by an explanation that I’d probably get out of that pretty quickly, you know, because it’s kind of…
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On Greek Religious Holidays
I was looking through my notes I took observing Greek culture. Here’s one of them, taken down on my iPhone in a furious stream of consciousness—which retrospectively sounds a little like early Richard Powers. Let the nominative phrases unfold. ————— In lieu of a tour of ancient Mystra, the stronghold of Turks and Communists, we…
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On Greece and Mental Health
One marker of a country’s civility is how it treats its criminals and its mentally ill. I realized that Greece is 50+ years behind America in these respects today. Like something out of Yates, here I was in the inanity of urban quasi-splendor, eating dolmades off china with three old women, while a severely delayed…
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On Unplugging, Flypaper, and Facebook
I realized that I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On the one hand, I love it that my iPad allows me to maintain an art journal, compose on the fly, or on the bus, or something like that. That finding wifi connections in Athens and Sparta has been so difficult has been something of…
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Day 3, A Visit to Ancient Sparta and Leonidas
What I didn’t get photos of was being hit up for money by a group of Gypsies. We were in a car, and weren’t allowed past until we paid their requested €25 toll. This was avoided by driving very slowly through their human roadblock, and they easily dispersed at 5 miles per hour.
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Day 3, Tripi: On the Food of the Gods
I came to Greece to see my family’s roots. And if that old platitude is correct, and we are indeed what we eat, I believe I come from pretty good stock. I’ve been amazed at how different Greek food is from Americanized “Greek” food. It’s really “clean” feeling, and I have yet to discern whether…