“New ideas do not just fall from the sky. They are born from…endlessly turning over the open questions, trying all roads to a solution, then again trying all the roads to a solution-and then trying all those roads again. Until there, where we least expected it, we discover a gap, …
“Know thyself”, Socrates says, but we fail to fulfill the admonition. We think we already have, we think we already do. We were there for all the check boxes of our development, and marked them off ourselves. We learned to walk. To tie our shoes laces. To color in the …
I write urgent pleas to a future me, begging him to tell me that it gets better, that we make it through, that tomorrow will hurt less than today. I reply from a later time. Writing letters to the scared and lonely person that I was just days, weeks, years, …
Nothing just happens. Neither merit nor value appear out of thin air. Nothing of worth simply grows on trees. Even a tree works to make a harvest,to produce fruit. It endures heat, and drought, and weather, and winter. It makes something out of water, earth, and air. A tree Persists. …
Something unseen slips. Shifts. Cracks. A zone of fractures. A fault. A displacement. A discontinuity. Something slow becomes something seismic. Everything quakes. Everything breaks. Docility gives way to catastrophe. And we are left alone in the wake. Sifting through the wreckage, the remnants, the residue. Wandering the vacancies and apparitions. …
By 8am on Sunday morning I’m curled into a corner between the cabinet and the wall. Depression is a real mother-fucker that way. I woke to it already hovering over me. A thickness in the air. A pressure. A density. I got up and walked the dog. Maybe I could …
The pen is mightier than the sword they say, but I write with the hope that swords will rust, or be made into plowshares. That we’ll till the earth. Share a harvest. That a portion of every field we’ll leave un-reaped. That there’ll be something left for the orphan, the …
Happiness isn’t grand. It’s a language I can’t speak, in a city I can’t find my way round, in a country I’ve immigrated to illegally. I’ve crossed what feels like an ocean with something that feels like hope, only to become wretched and tempest tossed on shore. Orphaned by the …
I don’t believe in writer’s block I said recently. But, what is it that I do believe? Especially when the words won’t come. When the air is filled with noiselessness after every empty utterance, after every desperate, beseeching prayer. Especially, when, after all the coaxing and cursing, I still can’t …
If we were honest with ourselves we’d admit there’s room to doubt everything. With the exception of the way we block grocery aisles reading nutritional facts and product labels, it’s the doubters that keep us moving forward. The ones who refuse to settle for anything surface level. Those who will …
