For a Moment

On the plane home during my 8th grade class’s trip to Rome, I sit next to Vasily. I am 14. I have a large cup of Mountain Dew in my lap, its contents looking like they could glow in the dark. I drink a lot of it and then put it between my legs, fall

Despair

I’m listening to Enya’s Watermark and trying to think myself out of a mental trap I often get into. I especially get stuck believing that things won’t change. Recent events–my father being dropped in my lap (sort of) and then getting sick–have made everything else harder to bear. Or my emotions harder to avoid. Almost

Music Part 1

I am not as philosophically or literarily advanced as Proust. I believe smells DO take you back, but it happens to me so seldom that I don’t think about it that much. Songs, on the other hand, paint immersive technicolor exhibits in my head regarding the past I often never want to leave. I have

Woman

Some days I am like a beautiful woman Awake in the morning My smile an embrace Everyone hates a beautiful woman Sometimes she is a lake people die in She walks in and People talk and Some begin to hate and Hunger eats at the seams of underpants Everyone eats nervously You call yourself a

Dreams

There is nothing, maybe just air and sky, if that. It is, however, freezing cold. Then a light, like a sundog, spreads vertically, infinitely. I understand it to be an infinite, vertical rainbow. Everything around it is gray. It may or may not contain all of the colors of the rainbow. It might contain just

What I Wish Hadn’t Happened

He walked along the row of seats, putting his hands on people’s shoulders and whispering in people’s ears. He’s just doing that so he can whisper in mine. It made me feel better to think this. I was the end of the row. He stopped, and put his hands on either side of my neck

For a Moment

A million years ago, I was in an airplane with my seventh and eighth grade classmates, flying back to California from Italy. We were unbelievably lucky private school children who had just spent a week in one of the oldest cities of Western Civilization doing what eighth graders do–having fun but missing the full gravity

Things, 1/23/21

Have you ever tried saying something like “May it be blessed” when you do something or have anxiety around something that happens? The tags on my car are out of date because this year has been a nightmare and today I was driving and cop car drove by and I was overcome with anxiety. I

The Truths of the Heart

“It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View Yesterday, I got an astrology reading from an

Softness in a Culture of Punishment

My favorite voice in Buddhism is a lesser known Zen “guide” named Cheri Huber. I discovered her ten years ago while staying at a monastery in Central California, between my sophomore and junior years of college. The monastery doubled as a resort in the summer and while I was there I was assigned to the