Today's Brass Ring Daily: Double-Down on Envy
Oof. Awkward.
There’s a great independent bookstore in my neighborhood. I like to walk by and look at the list of upcoming author readings and events pasted on the windows.
But actually wandering around inside bookstores has always made me uncomfortable in a vague and unexplainable way. Books, so many books! Look at all the work authors put into these books!
It took me, oh, about ten years to realize that uncomfortable feeling was the most revealing one of all: envy.
Envy shines a spotlight on everything you seek. Instead of trying in vain to turn off its light, walk straight into its arc and do something about it.
"I think it’s very right to never be satisfied and to always be hungry. Always feel hunger. I feel hungry because I see marvelous works around me and it makes me want to write more."
Paula Vogel can't stop, won't stop. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright is making her Broadway debut at the age of 65 with Indecent. Lovely interview here.
The Beginning of a Story You’ll Want to Read to the End
From “A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor”
“It’s 6 on a Wednesday morning, and Kabir Ahmed has snoozed his alarm one too many times. He steps softly, barefoot, around his small, second-story apartment in Jamaica, Queens, creaking through the green and pink hall.
He is late, but careful not to wake his wife and their three children, or his mother, who will be up in an hour to say prayers and cook breakfast. He puts on his baseball hat, slides his feet into rubber clogs and hurries out without coffee.
Mr. Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make a living selling food on the city’s sidewalks: pork tamales, hot dogs, rolled rice noodles, jerk chicken…” Finish reading here.
Thank you for reading.
Love, Kara