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This is the archive page for my blog. I am now putting my writing here, and I have a newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

The Year In Mixtape

An autobiographical mixtape reflection on 2015; favorite songs included in multiple media.

What You Have Been Doing With Your Last Few Days In New Orleans

The goodbye party at the lake is going exceptionally well. The lake was chosen because it’s outside and big and there’s always space, and if you’re brave you can go swimming. ("If you’re brave" because the city regularly advises against people swimming there; Lake Pontchartrain is dirty, and every once in a while someone dies in it for reasons that can’t be explained.) There is watermelon, a summery tape playing on a “Do The Right Thing”-inspired boombox, and an inflatable dolphin. It’s hot, but the shade and the breeze off the lake makes the heat tolerable. The people who have come — and there are lots — are people you love. You’re standing by the grill (green peppers and rings of onion are softening slowly over white coal) when someone you loved once asks: “What have you been doing with your last few days in New Orleans?"

Introverts & Cats #10

In which the protagonist hears her horoscope.

Reflection (In Cats)

Coltrane liked the old house. He's a wiry tuxedo cat who routinely loses fur around the base of his tail because that’s where the bugs like it most, and he bites at them incessantly. When we moved, Coltrane got this horrified look on his face that was practically human. He was like any kid on a TV show where the family has to move, except there was the tragic complication that Coltrane couldn’t understand why we would want to leave what had been a perfectly fine living situation for a smaller house with a ramshackle joke of a backyard. We couldn’t say, “Hey, the owner of the old house had to sell it. We don’t like this new one as much, either. But sometimes in life you just have to deal with things happening that you don’t like."

Introverts & Cats #9

In which the protagonist calls in sick.

I Don't Know Nothing Except Change Will Come

Before I embarrass myself, we should establish something: I am really into butterfly metaphors. I couldn’t care less how much they’ve been “done” (as one of my writing teachers told me they were), or that an entire generation of once-girls-now-women have rendered the image cliche through a veritable onslaught of lower back tattoos. A butterfly emerging from a cocoon is one of the best tiny mysteries of the natural world, and there just isn’t anything else quite like it.

Introverts & Cats #8

In which the protagonist has a pile of clothes.

Genderless Wombat Explains Public Libraries

Tomorrow, New Orleans votes on the New Orleans Public Library Millage Proposition Election. If the measure does not pass, New Orleans will need to close several branches of its libraries. This would be an unspeakable tragedy; public libraries are one of the most important things in our modern world. But don't take my word for it: here's a genderless wombat who will explain some of the details for you.

You Have Privilege. Use It Responsibly.

I am sitting down to write while Baltimore is uprising. Or — since the National Guard has been brought in, and a curfew is in place — I am sitting down to write in the wake of Baltimore uprising, and I can say this without hesitation: my white friends have opinions about it. Their opinions are: “There is never a reason for violence"; “Violence begets violence"; “It’s an uprising not a riot"; “The media is racist"; “Rioters are thugs"; “Rioters (uprisers) are heroes"; and, most popularly, “This again?"

What Was Worth Keeping

Two days ago, someone broke into my car. I was at a concert — the kind of concert I hadn’t been to in almost a decade, with electric guitars and an obsessively-adored touring musician. Throughout the show, I kept thinking, “I wish there was some way to hold onto this feeling.” I could tell that I was nearing the end of a part of my life where I truly enjoy being pressed up against the front of a stage, digging my fingers into some twenty-something’s amplifier. Someday soon this will all feel less exciting to me. I wanted to be able to remember how it felt to be that kind of alive. Meanwhile, someone quickly went through everything I’d left in the car since I started to move, and made judgements about what was worth keeping.

Collaboration

I have been collaborating with Rebecca Gabrielle Porath Katz. We sent half-comics to each other in the mail and then finished them. Here's the half I got in the mail, and, below that, the half Rebecca sent me.

Introverts & Cats #7

Introvert goes on a date with a boy.

Naming Things

If I could buy one indulgent new book for myself (and I’m not the type to buy indulgent new books; I am the type to buy nickel books and falling-apart books and books that have been out-of-print and gathering dust for decades), it would be “Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Catalog of Beautiful Untranslatable Words from Around the World” by Maria Popova. I saw it propped up on a shelf while I was browsing for gifts last month, and I lost a full hour going through it. It contains page after page of words that exist in only one language, and then whimsical little marker drawings to go alongside. For example, there’s the Norwegian word “forelsket,” which is “the indescribable euphoria one feels while first falling in love.” Or “tsundoku,” a Japanese noun meaning, “the leaving of a book unread after buying it.”

Keys

My friend Ben used to collect keys. He kept them in a jar: keys that had belonged to him, keys that had belonged to friends, keys he’d purchased at thrift shops (by the way, who are these people giving their old keys away to thrift shops?), keys people had lost or forgotten and he’d stumbled upon in passing. In the jar, the keys caught the sun sometimes and looked like an artifact out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Your eye could wander around the corners and spaces the keys left; the collection altogether was art-gallery dazzling.

Unlearning "These Kids Need You"

My senior year of college, I had my mind made up about what I was going to do, but no idea how I was going to do it. I was going to move to New York and become a journalist, somehow. I had spent some time working at The Nation Magazine the summer before, and i wondered if maybe they would rehire me to do some kind menial task (after all, I'd been a diligent fact-checker, and I wore such quirky outfits to the office). So there I was, perched on the edge of the vast unknown of a freckly job market, determined to succeed at find a profession in a dying industry, when I got an e-mail from Teach for America.

Nomads and Hoarders

I sat in the attic, staring at “the pile.” When we moved into this house, four years ago, it felt like a godsend to have so much space for everything: the woman who owned the house had asked us not to live upstairs, but she said we were welcome to use it for storage. So whenever something appeared in my life that I needed but did not need, I put it upstairs.

Take The Day Off

It was very easy to cut class at my high school. You simply walked off campus, and that was all. I know how easy it was because I cut class all the time — at LEAST once a week. Once one of our school security guards even tipped his hat at me (yes, his literal hat) as he watched me disappear down the street in the middle of the school day. There were plenty of things to do while not in school — you could watch “Kids In The Hall,” buy Oreos at the grocery store, or try to find secretly dirty pictures in the health books at the public library, for example — but my favorite thing to do was to get into Ben’s Geo Prizm with him and drive into the nothingness of the afternoon, blasting “Better Son/ Daughter” from the cheap car speakers with all the windows down.

When The Time Comes To Let It Go, To Let It Go

I have been holding rocks in my pocket ever since I read Byrd Baylor’s excellent children’s book, “Everybody Needs A Rock.” She says, "I’m sorry for kids/ who only have/ TRICYCLES/ BICYCLES/ HORSES/ ELEPHANTS/ GOLDFISH/ THREE-ROOM PLAYHOUSES/ FIRE ENGINES/ WIND-UP DRAGONS/ AND THINGS LIKE THAT — /if / they don’t have/ a rock/ for a friend.” I mean, how can you argue with that? This woman feels sorry for people with WIND-UP DRAGONS if they don’t have a thing as simple as a rock. So my desk drawers and jacket pockets are full of kumquat-sized stones I've stolen from rivers and beaches and yoga studios. (Yoga studios are always trying to sell you pieces of jewelry or fabric headbands by displaying them in dishes of stones. Those are usually the BEST ROCKS.)

You're Wrong About Valentine's Day

Yeah, I know. We’re all supposed to hate Valentine’s Day. If you’re not in a romantic relationship, you’re supposed to hate Valentine’s Day because you’re so lonely, and you have to watch everyone else be happy and coupled up. If you are in a romantic relationship, you’re supposed to hate Valentine’s Day because corporate America is trying to take ownership of your love and have you spend money on stuff no one really needs in order to pacify your significant other one day a year. We’re supposed to hate all the Celine Dion they play on the radio, and all the pink and red, and even the chalky candy hearts in all their glorious ubiquity.

How To Find Four-Leaf Clovers, And What To Do With Them

When you’re filling out your OK Cupid profile, you are supposed to complete the sentence, “I am really good at _____.” It’s kind of a tough question, because you don’t want to BRAG or anything, but there is so little in life that a person can be objectively GOOD at. Ideally, you’d be able to cite something where data backs you up: “I am really good at being tall;” or “I am really good at getting fan letters to Michael Bolton published on his fan page.” Lucky for me, I have exactly one skill like this. I am really good at finding four-leaf clovers.