I lived with four of my best friends when we were seniors in college. Our chore strategy was that we lived in filth until someone got fed up and rage-cleaned, and then they got to passive-aggressively sulk everyone else for the rest of the week as a reward.
someone else’s mom’s minivan
I don't think about childhood often, but the turn of the year always brings me back to that little burst of pleasure I felt preparing the year's first sheet of college-rule notebook paper, when I wrote the new year for the first time.
cleaning up bottles with you on new year’s day
It's New Year's and so I've been faffing around — we all agree that "faffing around" is the best British-ism, yes? — with New Year's resolutions. I like to set a resolution or two but inevitably I forget them within weeks, which is fine, since it's usually something like "Accept more social invitations" that is… Continue reading cleaning up bottles with you on new year’s day
cybernetics for kinesthetics
When I think about unpacking writing to its constituent biological processes, or to the rules of grammar and tone that comprise it, I feel nauseous like I do when I think about what’s outside of the universe, or God, or my most profoundly embarrassing moments.
roaring twenties
Ten years is a long time. Given that, it’s really shocking I made it through my twenties without being offered cocaine even once. Granted, I was invited to join several book clubs, and that’s a little more my speed (no pun intended) anyway, but still. Unless I crank (no pun intended) up my nightclub attendance… Continue reading roaring twenties
thirty, hurty, and dying
In two months I’ll turn thirty. On Instagram, my friends are celebrating their own thirtieths with oversized 3-0 balloons and bachelorette-style nights out with sashes, recording lash-batting, foot-popping Boomerangs, with cute hashtags to boot. Meanwhile, I’ve got one foot in the grave and the other in an ergonomic clog.
blue period
I remember vividly how the raw emotion of young adulthood, the wringer of heartbreak, betrayal, watching the US bomb the shit out of the Middle East, etc., gave way to realizing other people felt those emotions too, and that art was what they did to make them manifest.
queen of the road
Ten minutes into my first solo trip as a licensed driver, I got stuck in a parking lot. I had chosen a spot in the corner that was open only because everyone else knew better than to try it, a fact I discovered when I started to back out and realized that there were cars… Continue reading queen of the road
hej hej to all that
The Italian girls in my Danish class are beside themselves that I've left New York. “Jeg kommer fra New York,” I say, hacking up the “fra” like it's 2003 and I'm in the front row of French I with Madame H________. Better to sound French than to sound American. “Then why are you here?” asks… Continue reading hej hej to all that
putting away childish things
Adulthood, I think, is a matter of learning how to hold truths that contradict one another, because each truth was at one point valid. Every truth, in its own time and its own context, is how you become yourself.
