“O, come, be buried A second time within these arms” (They embrace) - From Pericles I don’t quite remember when I fell in love with the idea seafaring, or the trope of ocean-divided loves. Growing up so inundated with stories and poetry, it is hard to point to the bellwether. I was not very romantic … Continue reading World Spaces of the Sea: A Childhood of Love on the High Seas
I love reading at all times, despite my addiction to Netflix.* But while reading on a day off or while traveling is pleasing, some part of your brain knows you have other demands and time is limited. When you are ill and laid up with nothing you are physically capable of doing, and you have a … Continue reading Reading While Sick: A Luxurious and Occasionally Surreal Experience
A few years ago, I read a very interesting book called What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. It was a work that explained what we see in our mind's eye while we read, how our brain processes and rewrites information, and why my Anna Karenina is not Tolstoy’s or yours. It was … Continue reading How We Remember What We Read
Intro This is the story of me falling in love with Ernest Hemingway. The facts here have been pulled from diaries and personal essays over the years, which means it might not be very interesting, but it’s true. We’re going to start about six years ago. Of course, this isn’t some complete retelling of the … Continue reading Hemingway Daiquiri: A Story on Three Continents
It is a fact that most people who have known me pre- and post-college think I was an English major. It's understandable. My Instagram is 80% books (the other 20% is evenly split between architecture and my niece Cora). I also may have been pompous about books at some points (I'm sorry that I get … Continue reading The Story of History: Finding Meaning and Hope in a Story with No Beginning, Middle, or End
Over the last eighteen months I haven’t said anything overtly political on social media or reacted to political rants. I have liked an Op-Ed here and there and shared a Bernie Sanders Dank Meme, but that was the extent. I am naturally optimistic. I spent the last eighteen months convinced that there would be a … Continue reading “One Asian, under God, in the vestibule”: Empathy from a Young American
"I didn't want to lose anything. That was my main problem. I couldn't face the end of a day without a record of everything that had ever happened." - Ongoingness: The End of a Diary In her memoir Ongoingness, Sarah Manguso writes in fragmented vignettes of her compulsive diary keeping, her fear of forgetting, and … Continue reading I Want to Live: Memory and Memoir with Sarah Manguso
As politics get ugly and dumpsters explode and people are shot in the street without evidence of criminal activity, it can be easy to despair of the world. My Facebook feed runs the gamut of political emotions. There are those who want the prisons emptied, the police abolished, and every unjust death of oppressed peoples … Continue reading People Aren’t Eggs and the Future’s Not an Omelet: Corruption and Hope in Lloyd Alexander’s “Westmark” Trilogy
The Word After 