changing my mind

I attended a lecture today that blew my mind. You will know about it. But first: I went out running the other night. It was the first time after dark in this hood. I got lost. I typically run down the 97 steps, up the steepish hill of the street nearby, down the crazy...

Pocket full of souls

Having to go to the bathroom in remote jungle towns of Peru requires currency. What does it cost? One sole. Soles and centimos are the dollars and cents of Peru, but when I heard it initially, encountering a uniformed woman at the threshold of a bathroom asking for...

the unexpected

I’m in Brooklyn for the first day of my trans-continental adventure. The apartment where I am staying is in Crown Heights, which meant nothing to me until I was walking from the subway to discover it and realized that the street names and the scenery are all familiar....

languages and heartbreak

Foreign languages have been thrust into my experience lately. And for as much as it intrigues me, the idea of learning whole new languages, there is an almost thrilling fear that all but stops me from struggling through a conversation in a language I barely know....

everything spins

Sometimes I want to live in a low rent dive—the smallest enclosure with just enough space for a bed and a chair, both rickety and worn but bug free. Or worst, a ramshackle tree house like the one my neighbor’s dad built when I was a kid and I was instantly insanely...

The Magnetism of Grief

I woke up yesterday morning with an invisible and heavy apparition straddling me. “This is just grief,” I said to my bedroom ceiling, which was giving me that piteous look. When the obese ghost finally unlocked its legs from my waist so I could get out of bed, it...