They say your brother or sister is generally the person you will know longer than any other human being. My sister and I started that off on the right foot. Four years apart, I’m pretty sure the first dozen or so of my life, all we did was bicker. There was the time she pushed […]
Category: Updates
Updates to my life, where I currently am, what I’m currently doing, and what I’m currently thinking. Sometimes, the line between “essay” and “update” is a bit blurry.
Exploring Perception, or a Trip to Governors Island
Driving toward the Lincoln Tunnel on Route 3 East, there’s a few larger, sloping hills where you get this stunning view of Midtown and the whole City looks gargantuan. In the early evening with the sun dancing off the glass, you can even catch the colors of the Empire State with ease. It’s decidedly one […]
Facing a little anxiety, or the time I accidentally took Daisy Mae’s pills
From the door of my apartment, the train station is almost exactly a seven minute walk. That’s five-and-a-half blocks and crossing the street once. The walk passes a gas station, a bagel shop (with terrible service but the best bagels you’ve ever had), multiple laundry mats and auto part stores, several residences, and at least […]
The Freedom and Imprisonment of Being a Toddler, or Vacationing in Virginia
Through a large swath of Virginia, there’s a road called the Skyline that hugs the Appalachian trail at the top of a series of mountain ridges. It’s basically exactly what you’d imagine it should be: pristine views, stretches of asphalt where you find yourself driving under, through, and above the cloudline, rain that pops up […]
Family, against all odds
I had a friend in college who once said to me that, though he considered himself an atheist, he wanted so badly to believe there was something, anything out there watching over us with tender love and care. He just couldn’t. I was always struck by this because I felt the exact opposite: whereas he […]
Making Sacred Space Where There is None
There’s this moment during a misty rain in New York City where if you look up to the skyline, the familiarity of the buildings you’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the sunshine is lost to the low-hanging clouds. If you squint, you can see one of the taller towers just peering through the fog but […]
Changing Trains
There’s this moment after leaving the Secaucus station where the train ducks into a tunnel, and the deeper into the dark it goes, the quicker the air pressure changes as if to suck the little sickle cell up the vein to the heart of Manhattan. From under the Hudson, all the passengers are adjusting their […]
Caught in the Fog
This week there was a fog that covered Shelter Island for an entire day. It was light enough that standing in the middle of it, the warm colors of the autumn leaves blurred together a little like the yellows and reds of a Van Gogh. The distant trees on a small hill could’ve been any […]
Broken Shells in all their Goodness
On the southwestern tip of Shelter Island, there’s a hidden public beach called Shell Beach. I say it’s hidden because you could easily drive right by the unmarked turn-off for it in a residential area and never know it was there. But the beach itself is nearly a mile-long peninsula just barely wide enough for […]
What it Means to Know a Place, or Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
For the past month, when I’ve been driving around, I’ve had the radio on “scan” just trying my hardest to get a feel for what Long Island and Connecticut (since we pick up some of those stations) have to offer. I’m fairly certain at this point that there’s some kind of unstated rule where every […]
