Do you read here? I used to look at the analytics and wonder. For the most part I could pinpoint who/where people were, but there’d occasionally be a random city and I’d wonder who managed to stumble across this hideyhole. And if you did, if one of those Philadelphia readers was you, then you know […]

Facebook reminded me that ten years ago today I posted that my plans to move to Seoul had fallen through and that I was looking for temporary housing while I tried to figure out my next steps. Step one: two random dudes on Craigslist who were both younger and seemed nice, kindly not asking why […]

62 weeks ago I saw Parasite in a movie theater. It was glorious. Superb film, packed house, rapt audience. If we never go back to the movies again, I’m glad that to have that as my last theater memory. 59 weeks ago was the last time I touched another human being when I hugged my […]

I turned 39 last week. It was a very quiet birthday that, to be honest, not many people remembered. It encapsulated so much of what the last year has been like. Rather, what the last year has been like for me specifically. If I were more of an extrovert, if I were more invested in […]

There’s a strange disconnect as the outside world is changing rapidly day by day in ways that are unpredictable and long-term while the interior of my small studio is the same and the days are a blur and I find myself searching for ways to mark time so it doesn’t just slip away. I’m relying […]

I dreamed about Herm last night. It’s not a place I think about often, much less visit in my subconscious, so today I’ve wandered back to prod at the edges of my memory of that single perfect day. There are bits I can’t remember. There was a ferry, and something about the tides that meant […]

The opening lines of the song spring day are something that translates loosely to I miss you / and in saying it I miss you more which is so simple… and yet. I don’t remember ever saying “I miss you” out loud to the memory of you, Mom, until today when sat at my desk […]

Eavan Boland died today. There are so many poems, of course. But I am picking up Object Lessons, her memoir and rumination on being a poet, on being a woman, that feels especially suited to this moment when everything has shrunken and sharpened into the immediate and daily: At the age of seventeen I left […]

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon poisons the air like fallout, I come again to see the serene, great picture that I love. Here space and time exist in light the eye like the eye of faith believes. The seen, the known dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light that was not, […]

Daddy was a mover and a gold creek miner, never had a dollar or a hard luck song. Mama ran off and he’s never gonna find her, went down the river, she’s a long time gone. Daddy taught me everything he thought we needed in the world just to get along. Brew a little feelgood, […]

The Latin complicare means to fold. I love the tactility inherent in folding: it requires some pressure, some movement, some shaping. I love that this tactility assumes a degree of control while still allowing for chance and surprise. Folds might be knife-edged and precise, or loose and haphazard. Folding might be a deliberate and premeditated […]

how many loved your moments of glad grace. is a particular alliteration that is one of my favorites in all the literature I’ve ever read. Glad grace. Grace is a concept central to Christianity, of course, but I probably-quite-consciously avoid faith-tinged definitions in both my reading and use of grace as a concept. I prefer […]

But the real mystery and magic lies in those quasi-mystical moments, portraits of extreme focus and total relinquishment. We might feel more comfortable calling this “meditation,” but I believe the right word is in fact prayer. […] unmoored, without its usual object, God, but it is still focused, self-forgetful, and moving in an outward direction toward the […]

I voted for her because she’s the most qualified. Because representation is essential. Because I have little nephews I hope grow up believing that girls are badasses with whom they need to reckon. Because I want the fact that Hillary has shown up and done the work day in and day out for a lifetime […]

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are […]

Yesterday Linus and I went down the winding Skyline, dodging cyclists every hundred yards, testing my manual driving prowess, zipping between dim forest canopy and brilliant ridgetop. The road itself didn’t feel much different than the last time I drove it in the fall, which is one of the strangest things about this place: a total lack of […]

The Milwaukee airport is home to one of the best used book stores I’ve ever been in–all the more endearing for being smack in the middle of the terminal where you’d least expect to find fine collections of 1940s pulp, political theory, and full sets of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. It was one of […]

I’ve lived in ten different places in the eleven years since I graduated from college. Ten different places I’ve called ‘home’ for varying lengths of time, ten different neighborhoods, ten different homes that have all looked like variations on a theme because I am a champion nester, ten different zip codes to remember and addresses […]

There’s a snoozy, snoring puppy curled up like a donut next to me on the couch. It’s too warm for a fire, otherwise I’d have one in the fireplace that anchors this beautiful, open space. Moths are beating their wings at the windows, and in the morning their bodies will litter the floor and doorways. Tonight these […]

The fact that my time in Boston is finite is beginning to sink in. I’m wondering if this is the last time I see A, drive down B, roll my eyes at C. I’m beginning to say my goodbyes. And one of these happened this weekend, when I took a last trip north to a […]

(with thanks to my BC cohort. one of the reasons I loved grad school was the chance to write things like the what’s below. I followed it up with insightful and beautifully academic commentary, I swear.) I’ll just say things in Agamben. Then not even Google can help you. why does no one outside BC […]

Dear Beloved Yellow Backpack, I can’t believe this terrible phone-photo is the only one I took of you, but I can’t seem to find another version anywhere. So, Beloved Yellow Backpack, this is how I guess I will remember you. Good thing I’ll always have my memories. And what memories they are. I bought you […]

I’ve made a few trips to New York over the last two months, seeing the city for the first time through fantastic meals, lots of walking, incredible food, successfully navigation of a tiny portion of the subway system, hitting of a few of the Times-designated best coffee spots, eating some more, and a single museum […]

In 1989, German documentary filmmaker Philip Groening wrote to the monks at the famed Carthusian monastery, the Grande Chartreuse, and asked if they would be willing to be the subjects of his next film. They told him they were not quite ready, but that they’d get back to him. Sixteen years later, they did. Their […]

I have things to write, I really do. I’ve been reading, a lot, really good things, and thing about which I have Deep Thoughts. However, other things have also intruded, not the least of which is the upcoming cape trip and influx of many from out of town which will be the highlight of the […]

In an effort to destash and make some room for new teas, I’ve been doing some spring cleaning. This weekend I came across a delicious sample I’d forgotten about… A few months ago, putting away the coffee order, I found a small, vaguely-labelled bag tucked into one of the boxes: Marissa, light fragrance TKY. Uh, […]

When I was twelve, Gretchen started teaching me the classic repertoire–solos from Giselle, Coppelia, Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty–that every dancer learns. Michel Fokine’s The Dying Swan, to Saint-Saen’s Le Cygne from The Carnival of the Animals, is one of the most famous of the repertoire, and the only solo Gretchen refused to let […]