free ride
On the train home, the coffee got a free ride. Sure, it was tipped over and spilled out, a meager half-napkin underneath it on the orange plastic seat, but it didn’t have to show its transfer to the fare cops. Only one brave person sat next to it. He was tall and had a leather jacket, so it was to be expected, that level of bravery, of sacrifice. He gestured grandly when people moved to sit down on the coffee: NO, his hands outstretched said, and he furrowed his brow. Protecting the people from stains is a difficult job. I wondered if the coffee was headed all the way to the beach, or just down to the Scientology office. To the pet store? To the dry cleaners? There were so many possibilities for the nearly-bereft container. But I was shy, and...
Read Moremisanthrope
Hello there. I have made almost no NaNoWriMo progress, but still feel like writing, putting something down on the page, as it were, despite this not really being a page or even down. Lately I have felt so full of disappointment in human beings, myself included. It started with the rejection of my graduate school application. Granted, I submitted only one, and granted, the economy went and exploded, and granted, there are many reasons why this could have happened, but for a while I could only see a big fat FAIL when I looked at myself. I’m not used to doubting my brains, not because I think I am more intelligent than I am, but because I have always been good at assessing where I stand on the intelligence spectrum. So while I probably wasn’t rejected on...
Read Morenow what
I was at work when the news came, when the world changed. I was at work and we are not supposed to show our emotions on our sleeves, our choices on our lapels, but we couldn’t help it, and we clapped our hands and laughed and said yes. My father called and said, “Thank you, California!” and I replied, “Thank you, Pennsylvania!” and for a few minutes it was like we were in the same place. I sent my mother a text that read, “Yes, we can, and yes, we did! Congratulations on a new America, mooms.” She replied that she was with me, and for a few minutes, she was. On the train home, I sneakily studied the faces of the people around me, thinking: does he know yet? Is she happy? And then I pretended as if I didn’t know yet,...
Read Morebrute force
If I disappear for a few weeks, don’t worry: I am participating in National Novel-Writing Month, a/k/a NaNoWriMo. Why am I torturing myself with this 50k-word exercise again this year? For the simple fact that I desperately need to get back into the habit of writing every single day, and this is the brute-force method I know that works best. I admire my friend Adam‘s dedication to documenting his NaNoWriMo experience, and hope to do the same with mine this year.
Read MoreHello What
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