Looking Up On The Subway

It becomes so apparent when I’m traveling: we live alongside each other.

We occupy the same space, take the same bus, wait in the same room, stand on the same curb, but we’re a million miles away from one another. We don’t know our neighbors. We rarely break bre… Read more...

Searching for Villains

I’ve been yelling at the podium a lot lately.

It’s the school board. I scratched a little hole, looked through, and what I saw was too ugly to walk away from. The people around me, the community, a lot of them see it too and now we’re all standing in the mud, tea… Read more...

The Hug

I had some time so I decided to go to one of my favorite restaurants and get dinner and a drink while reading my book.

Approaching the restaurant, I could tell something was off. The door was open but the place was empty and the owner was yelling.

Walking through the door, I saw he… Read more...

Try Not Knowing

The greatest thing you can do upon meeting someone new is to recognize that you do not know them.

What you see, how you feel… these things will mislead you. We are manipulated by patterns and repetition. Once we see 5 trees grow to the same height with the same fruit, we sta… Read more...

The River & The Bridge

There I am, as new as the sun coming up over the edge of the earth, reflecting on the magnificence of the river.

Ignoring time, I instinctively jump into the river and let the current take me, it doesn’t matter where I go and I don’t care that I left my shoes behind. I… Read more...

Compassion is Hard

Compassion is hard.

It’s not always right there on the surface. Often, we have to dig through layers of resentment, anger, indifference, rage, even humor to bring it into view. We have to forage past first instincts and first impressions.

Compassion is not always met with graRead more...

The Cost of Being Special

Sometimes I feel lonely, not the loneliness that comes with accrued time in solitude but the deeper singularity of realizing that, mathematically speaking, there’s no one like me out there.

This is not meant to be sad.

With the complexity and randomness of genetics, combined … Read more...

Back-Up Hearts

I’m so absent-minded this morning, I put on my reading glasses and then started looking for them on my desk.

Hard news does that. It takes you out of life and puts you in a stupor, in a murky haze with no walls and no exit.

I’ve been lucky. Not much hardship for me but,… Read more...