At 31, with my faculties and most of my dignity intact, I'm hard-won. People know me and know of me.
Author: Dana Cass
Writer, retired amateur ballerina, reluctantly fluent in corporate jargon, often confused for a twelve-year-old. American living in London.
nuance, but nuanced
I lapsed briefly the other day, while reading about Eleanor Roosevelt's course at an English boarding school, into cursing anew my subpar secondary education. I'm tired of the Internet right now, the barrage of too-pat memes that flatten every systemic failure into a hot take with a solution simple enough to fit into a hashtag,… Continue reading nuance, but nuanced
writers: they’re just like us!
I recently read two books written by people I know. (It's cool. I'm fine! I love the choices I've made and that I expend my creative energy tweeting on behalf of a corporation.) The first, a collection of essays, was by a friend with whom I share not one but two alma maters: our performing… Continue reading writers: they’re just like us!
BODY
Spotify's Throwback Thursday playlist was Pride-themed last week. This post is not about how many of the songs on the playlist I had sung (4), choreographed (2), or danced to (7), but even setting the memory of my star* turn as Alexi Darling in the 2009 Vassar College production of "Rent" aside, I associate many… Continue reading BODY
31
I thought this morning about the past year and God help me but the first thing that came to mind — from a year when I got engaged, moved to London, and survived at least the first wave of a global pandemic — was being pitched by a San Francisco ad agency. They took us… Continue reading 31
some thoughts on cooking
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
