I can’t sleep in hotel rooms. The fluorescent lights, the vent’s false breeze, the sealed-off city behind its funeral parlor curtains—all of it triggers a feeling of body-lessness, a sense that every other pulse available to me is inhuman. Lonesome nights on work trips always end with me sprawled across a giant bed, contemplating the…

Growing up, thriftiness was next to godliness. My sisters and I were never in want, but our eternal case of low-grade covetousness was stoked by an odd egotism: we were too good to eat out, shop anywhere but secondhand, or upgrade from a muffler-less Aerostar to something that didn’t belch smoke. We were too good…

My last Good Letters post lamented the surreal appetites and remedies of the bureaucratic hive, as well as that world’s great need for beauty. I may have left you wondering: if life in the L’Enfant Plaza Canyon is so dire, then why don’t I just ditch it? Aside from my lot as the family breadwinner,…