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 …
A beginning doesn’t always happen first. Sometimes it’s a response. Sometimes its what comes next. What follows after. An exertion of forces interacting, equal and opposed. An action or reaction, when something gets pushed or moved. Sometimes it’s an opening in the thick of an unfolding. A moment in the …
I’m a lot of different things, but mostly bad at all of them. A minimalist, with an addiction to buying books. A kind of Buddhist, or at least Buddh-ish, struggling with acceptance, mindfulness, and letting go. I’m a writer that’s rarely been published and almost never paid. Sometimes I wonder …
When there’s nothing, nothing there, nothing to say, nothing said, nothing to hear, nothing to find, when nothing appears, and nothing arrives; Writing is about learning to pay attention”, Anne Lamott says, and trying “to communicate what is going on.” Even, when you don’t know, even when you’re empty, even …
Rob Bell says that “Love wins.” But , Amy Winehouse says that “Love is a losing game“, and that feels right to me. Love necessitates a loss; a losing of a kind. A loss of self. A loss of ego. A loss of hubris. A loss of pride. The things …
To be a writer, to be an artist, is to shepherd a glimmer of something we have not fully seen. To coax something we only faintly understand. To be coaxed by it in return. And to give it as a gift to someone we have never met. To be a writer, to be …
Any response I can feign is stifled. Stretching with a creak, I pull at the question until it tightens, with nothing in my sights. “The heart is an arrow”, Leigh Bardugo says. It is elegant and precise when given direction. It is goodness, and beauty, and truth. A foot upon …
