Thursday, August 19, 2021

Friends from College

Image is "Two men contemplating the moon," Caspar David Friedrich. Public domain. Both names changed. Thanks to Agnes Enkhtamir for inspiration on the public epistolary format!DEAR RICARDODear Ricardo,Your name isn’t Ricardo....

Monday, October 05, 2020

Misplaced Civility

Lately my Twitter feed seems divided between two camps: those who wish President Trump well in his fight against COVID-19 and those who are gleeful about the karmic retribution of a man who has systematically downplayed...

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Cuties

I watched Cuties tonight. For those of you who don't fill the yawning chasm of pandemic time by doomscrolling on Twitter, Cuties is a movie about French pre-teens in a dance quartet, focusing on an 11-year-old...

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Dear Neighbor

I wrote this in response to the Day 32 prompt, "Dear Neighbor," from Suleika Jaouad's "Isolation Journals" project. No neighbors were harmed in the making of this (unsent) letter.Dear Neighbor,I'm not sure what it means...

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Before / After

After, we sing "Happy Birthday" like a dirge. I hear it in my head with Dr. Bronner's castile soap frothing up between my fingers. Returning from the outside, an obstacle course of high-touch surfaces, I wash my hands and...

Monday, October 21, 2019

Staying in place

The provincial joy of a sunset sky, Berkeley, CA I read an article about acknowledgements in academic papers. Through the lens of the acknowledgement the article illustrates, and critiques, the kind of person held...

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Alex

I thought about him on the subway. The things he liked--that bright yellow book he left on our kitchen table, Watchmen, that I read and half-understood. Running, his face contorted with effort and hair blown back by the...

Thursday, May 09, 2019

Georgia

The news of the "heartbeat" abortion bill in Georgia filled me with a peculiar sense of rage. Peculiar because it felt more like sadness. Sometimes it's easier to shiver in the cold than keep a fire going. I don't know...

Tuesday, January 01, 2019

French Polynesia and some thoughts on travel

I capped off 2018 with a spontaneous solo trip to French Polynesia (which you may know as "Tahiti" or "the islands of Tahiti," though Tahiti is the name of one of many islands that make up the country). It's a land I first...

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Teach your kids to be more than just "nice"

My friend J., a scion of that kind of enlightened Berkeley family with beautiful décor in the living room and magic mushrooms in the freezer, told me that his mom had taught him in no uncertain terms not to rape....

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Friendship now

Omnibus; Anders Zorn 1892 The other night coming home on BART I reflected that I did not want to write, or read, or do much of anything really. I imagined the tantalizing possibility of unintellectual pursuits. Maybe...