Beasts of Burden 1 It’s about five years ago, in the car with my aunt. She was giving me driving lessons to help me prepare for my license test. We were hungry and decided to grab lunch at a nearby Subway. When we were inside, she encouraged me to open up about myself, so […]
I’m lying in my room on a cold Sunday night, browsing on my laptop, almost 100 miles away from home, alone. I text my mother to remedy that. She’s eager to hear from me as always. The subject turns to friends, the ones I’ve made in the past, and the ones I haven’t made in […]
It’s not outside that counts, but there’s a limit to that too. -Dr. Atsuko Chiba If I were to sleepwalk back through the entirety of my life, I’d consider myself reality’s designated scapegoat. Going through it the first time, I found myself much more attentive to my surroundings than most of the people around me. […]
On the year’s last day / when all of a life’s accounts / have been settled up. -Hana When I look back at myself and my circumstances, I don’t feel I have much, if anything, to be truly thankful for. To elaborate, by “truly thankful” I mean thankful in a way that cannot be attributed […]
I hate you more than I can bear. And I love you more than I can bear. -The Old Hag The fact that life is lived as performance is a truth I’ve understood as long as I can remember. Though everyone puts on a performance, many spend a large part of their lives completely […]
Le Guin’s presence, as it has been presented and evolved over the course of her essays, is one of the cartographer. It happened on a whim, me finding a parent’s old paperback copy of The Lathe of Heaven. When I opened the pages of thar book, the following seeds were planted in my mind’s […]
The stories we tell with and about our games are invariably stories of communication and intimacy. A childhood memory I can always recall with clarity is the first time I beat my father at Chess. My parents had taught me the game at a young age, but I was never especially skilled at it. […]
It can be argued that a good conversation and a fine meal are fundamentally the same pleasure. Both require a decerning palate, an awareness of rules and customs, and an intellectually curious spirit. The mingling of foreign concepts with internal ecosystems, where new ideas are made both familiar and enjoyable through natural process, leading to […]
Though I have always enjoyed writing, I have come to dislike writing essays from the moment I was obligated to doing it in school. I enjoy writing the most when I can free myself of any pretenses of order or structure. Just letting the ideas flow fully and freely for as long as I can […]