Ed Simon is the editor at Belt Magazine and a staff writer emeritus for The Millions. He has contributed to, among others, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Author of over a dozen books, his upcoming title Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost will be released by Ig Publishing in August of 2023. Email: edsimon310 [at] gmail.com
by Ed Simon “Men intoxicated are sometimes stunned into sobriety.” —Lord Mansfield (1769) Today marks eight years since I had my last drink. Or maybe yesterday marks that anniversary; I’m not sure. It was that kind of last drink. The kind of last drink that ends with the memory of concrete coming up to meet…
by Ed Simon I am condemned to be free. —Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness Well, I wish I could be like a bird in the sky, how sweet it would be if I found I could fly, Oh, I’d soar to the sun and look down at the sea, and then I’d sing ’cause I’d…
by Ed Simon What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. —Augustine, Confessions (397) Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. —Richard Cummings, The Girl in the Golden Atom (1922) Twenty-six years…