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Lightplay

Why are you here, if not to sign-up for Lightplay, my mini-magazine?   Enter your email   Lightplay is the mini-magazine that I write, edit, design, and publish. It is available in both visual and audio formats, delivered by email (subscribe above) and podcast (listen here). Sent on a roughly monthly schedule, each edition of Lightplay has a central feature and more. I hope to make the experience of receiving a Lightplay fun, like getting a letter from an old friend. Or a new friend. Let’s be friends. Below, please find the archives of Lightplay. . 001 – Salsa Ranchera… Read More »Lightplay

Jasper as Teacher

The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. This bit of truth has proven true over and over in my life. I worked for seven years as a California Poet in the Schools. For the last six years I have tutored students in writing through Signet Education. I have taught classes or given lectures at Mendocino College, Wesleyan University, Antioch Los Angeles, and UCLA. On this website you can listen to my lecture on creative reading, learn my approach to writing the perfect college essay, or ask me for a PDF of my 81-page guide… Read More »Jasper as Teacher

Jasper as Cook

Cooking is one of the best ways to spend a day, a week, an hour, or a life. I love cooking, and I love writing about cooking. Selected essays include an exploration of the theory and technique of making a great sandwich, an ode to the joys of stovetop espresso, a dive into the practice of fermenting and baking bread (with my bread log), a history of the Romanian diasporic joy of making your own sauerkraut, a love song to a specific restaurant’s huevos rancheros (with a recipe for salsa ranchera), and some deep memories and instructions for how tacos… Read More »Jasper as Cook

Fuck Off We’re Working

. A Manifesto for the Left Hand . The Best Way to Hurt 1. I write poems because this year they forgot to tell me not to. 2. I write poems because rhythm is true and image too. Rhyme only sometimes. 3. We poets are like this, we first think of ourselves as poets and then start writing poems. 4. We’re poets foremost because of the pay. No faster path to the proletariat than writing poems. 5. The privelege of the bourgeois is to want to be proletariat, to imagine themselves proletariat, to use the word proletariat. 6. I sit… Read More »Fuck Off We’re Working

“A Textbook Insurgency” – Adbusters, July 2009

. I wrote this piece my senior year of high school, and it was published in the summer of 2008, after my first editorial wrestling match. I lost, and this is what came out: . . “We sit around three clusters of whirring computers, watching our high school teacher read the lecture notes prepared from Harvard University professor Gregory Mankiw’s textbook, The Principles of Economics. ‘Trade always makes all participants better off,’ he says. I glance at a friend across the room. We both know something is not right about this.” (Continue reading.)

Travelogue 7 – The Amateur Mountaineers

What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I send every week or two while I’m on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This installment was originally sent out on December 12, 2015. Dear Travelogue Readers — . It’s been a couple of weeks since my last update, and much has happened, though it also feels like I’ve been standing still. I made it to Thailand, spent a week laid low by the flu, and for the time being I’m living in Chiang Mai, a northern city filled with other foreigners and ex-pats. Life here… Read More »Travelogue 7 – The Amateur Mountaineers

Two Tibetan Print Houses

What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I sent every week or two while I was on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This installment was originally sent out on November 16, 2015. My last morning the monk and I struggle to communicate. I’ve told him that I’m going to hitchhike to Derge, a town famous for its traditional printing presses. He leans forward again and pretends to spread ink on a woodblock, mimes putting paper down, and then rocks forward again as if he was running a roller the length of… Read More »Two Tibetan Print Houses

Travelogue Excerpt – Wachang to Litang

What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I send every week or two while I’m on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This installment was originally sent out on October 27, 2015. Day 7: Wachang – ??? I have a terrible nightmare of skidding off the edge of a cliff. I am on a motorcycle with big panniers and a wide console for a stereo and all the other stuff certain bikers want for their rides. It seems clunky and overbuilt, unstable. I’m coming down one of these narrow Tibetan roads carved into the side… Read More »Travelogue Excerpt – Wachang to Litang

Travelogue Excerpt – Muli Monastery to Wachang

What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I send every week or two while I’m on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This was originally written on October 16 and sent out October 26. Day 5: Muli Monastery – Wachang I wake up to a loud voice: “Jasper, Jasper!” It takes me a little while to sort out where I am. The off-white sky crossed by two black stripes; the cocoon of impossibly perfect warmth. “Jasper!” I sit up and unzip the tent and then the condensation-damp fly. Outside Jasi and Tsien-lu are bundled up… Read More »Travelogue Excerpt – Muli Monastery to Wachang

Travelogue Excerpt – Kunming to Muli Monastery

What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I send every week or two while I’m on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This installment was originally sent out on October 12, 2015.  DAY ZERO: KUNMING My twenty-fifth birthday. Buy apples, pomegranates, toilet paper, a bar of laundry soap, and a tiny towel. Wash clothes by hand on roof terrace of hostel. Shower and shampoo my hair. Attempt to get SIM card for phone at China Mobile, unsuccessfully. I am terrified. My stomach on its own is clenching and occasionally its muscles buzz, like a phone.… Read More »Travelogue Excerpt – Kunming to Muli Monastery