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Lifting the lid of the termite farm
I recently had a disappointing experience where I got some disturbing clarity about a number of things. It’s painful to realize that others have used you and your private expression over a number of years in order to support their own psychodrama, casting you, baselessly, as a perpetual villain while they get to take turns…
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A Culmination / mythologies / Maybe being jaded isn’t so bad
Some life points are more pivotal, more decisive than others. Things build over time, a culmination of moments, hours, days, weeks, months. Sometimes things can brew. Sometimes fragile things grow. Sometimes there are thin spots, where every moment feels intimate, fleeting, leaving one in gratitude. Moments that only happen because of a drooping openness, a…
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the mess
The first time I had ankle surgery, it was on accident. I had had no choice but to trust the medical personnel taking care of me, at a point when my trust in institutions and helping people in general was pretty low. I was really lucky to land in excellent, compassionate hands with my surgeon.…
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Peaks & Valleys
Last month, for the first time since February 2020, I boarded an airplane. The Delta variant had just started to kick up, but my backpacking friend and I took every possible precaution. We had booked campsites in advance as well as kayaking and boating expeditions. We used a rideshare app called Turo to book automobiles…
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Ghost Ship
Though I’m doing other things with my life, I still sometimes have the sensation that my academic career plows onwards, like a ghost ship raided and abandoned by pirates. It’s a disembodied feeling, sort of like there’s a whole part of my body still on that boat, spinning the wheel and hoisting a sail, that…
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the brain as it is
Sometimes one rolls all the way back down the mountain in a snowball of old junk, into old realities which block out the new and sabotage hopes of renewed peace. What I’ve had to acknowledge is that through some of my experiences, my brain changed and I have to be continually mindful to manage it…
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hollowed pride
The above image chronicles the last time I played chess with my dad. I was almost 9 the day that I beat him. He snapped a polaroid, bragged about it to others, and never played with me again. Eventually I found other people to play with, one friend who was a boy, and mostly boys…
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“intersubjectivity”
I’ve attended several virtual events this past year, and some have stuck with more more than others – those that have inspired me, or, alternatively, provoked me in uncomfortable ways that have continued to bother me or simply make me want to gag; as they say, if you see something, say something. So I am…
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Freeze / Melt
The ice storm of a week and a half ago turned out to be the most destructive weather event here in the last 30 years. I didn’t ever really have a moment where I felt endangered, but going through the motions of survival was probably good earthquake preparation. Being disconnected from the internet was a…
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Search for Clarity
Even now I still search for clarity. Where did I go so wrong? Where was the point at which I stepped from safety into all the danger. How might I have kept myself safe, how might I have survived all that. What didn’t I see, and still don’t see? What didn’t I understand then? Not…