The Meryl Streep onion-slicing montage in "Julie & Julia," a movie I watched once eleven years ago, haunts me...
insult and quarantinjury
The other week I read some WSJ puff piece about how locked-down Americans doing burpees for the first time keep spraining their ankles. I rolled my eyes at all the bumbling idiots, like I'm not someone who once tweaked my neck so badly shampooing my hair that I couldn't turn my head for a week,… Continue reading insult and quarantinjury
i love the passing of time
I mostly find it futile to read about other people's preposterous ideas of the future, although it feels silly to say that from here in the middle of a pandemic during which we entertain ourselves by beaming our faces into one another's homes.
the name is the thing
Maybe it's magical thinking: If I don't name it, it can't be. It's a backwards Ursula K. LeGuin.
a girl can dream
I tend to have vivid, emotionally draining dreams that ratchet up in intensity until, just before I wake up, I realize with tremendous relief that I'm dreaming. So yes, that's what I'm waiting for here: the end of the dream, or the deus ex machina, or whatever it is that doesn't involve me sitting in… Continue reading a girl can dream
no pomp due to circumstance
To the second-semester senior who has been unceremoniously dispatched home by the coronavirus, just when you were about to depart on your victory lap...
creeping crud
I used to joke that I would regret all of the postapocalyptic novels I read in my twenties and here I am, regretting all of the postapocalyptic novels I read in my twenties.
all-day dining at the homesick restaurant
(With gratitude and apologies to the inimitable Anne Tyler.) I was in Palo Alto this past week for work. Now that I live in Europe, my once- or twice-yearly visits to the California office are a jet-lagged flurry of hugging people I thought had been fired long ago. (To be fair, they obviously think the… Continue reading all-day dining at the homesick restaurant
i’ll scratch your back…
As I start thinking about how to eventually market myself as an author, I’ve set myself to actually participating in social media. In case you’re wondering how that’s going for me, a misanthrope, here is an actual excerpt from my diary this morning: “It’s nice to see how engaging on social media begets engagement on… Continue reading i’ll scratch your back…
swallowing the world
"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world." — Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children Where you were when When September 11th happened, I was twelve, a couple weeks into seventh grade. The footage on television was terrifying, but my classmates and I had never been to New York, and it felt consequential but… Continue reading swallowing the world
