Plus, Mary Oliver on the “third self.” I’m taking Tomato on his ordinary morning walk around the neighborhood, and I’m beginning to write this essay in my head, scrambling the ideas together. It’s due, see? I promised I’d publish a new one every week. I will keep my promise. Mostly…

…and why sensitivity is a creative person’s greatest gift. A childhood memory: I am walking down a cement sidewalk that links one winding suburban street to another, abridging the route to the neighborhood pool. The air swells with ordinary birdsong and bug sounds against a manicured backdrop of green. I…

There’s a group of strangers blocking the sidewalk up ahead, and so I thread myself between the nose and tail of two parked cars to walk down the middle of the street instead. That’s how I notice the necklace that dangles from the rearview mirror, tugging at my peripheral vision…

On adopting a dog named Tomato, skies full of clouds, and other tender things — including a reframe of “productivity.” This story was originally published on Substack. Subscribe here! And, all of the photos included were shot on film in the Bay Area — around my neighborhood in Oakland, along…

and the stories told by the vaccine rollout, from the perspective of a person with Type 1 diabetes. Our recycling bin is currently feathered with the torn-up shreds of last week’s New York Times magazine, and the reason is that I’m a freelancer. Since I’m self-employed, I have to buy…

On hard conversations, confrontation, and the craving for quiet. — I have been thirsty for silence. Silence like seltzer from a just-cracked can, the fizz stinging the tongue on its way towards the long glug. Like a steaming shower on jittery limbs. Like when you’ve just gotten out of the ocean with tentacled hair clinging to pink shoulders, and you…

On growing tomatoes and the insidiousness of work culture — If this were any other year, there’s so much I’d want to show you and tell you about. About the first roasted tomatoes of the season, bubbling under their blistered skins, devoured three days in a row for lunch or dinner because why would anyone ever eat anything else? About…

The only sound is the snickering of candles we’ve arranged on the edge of the sink and the closed toilet seat, their flames flickering gold on our forehead sweat. Is the occasional swoosh of the shallow water that we swirl with our bath-puckered hands, just to sense movement. Is the…

Finding meaning in the spaces between — GAP, noun \’gap\ : (1) a difference, especially an undesirable one, between two views or situations (2) an incomplete or deficient area (3) an assailable position Katie Ledecky carves water into shards as the construction men shatter the street outside our house, hunting for the source of the leak. The…