I've been working on this essay about owls for over a year now, which means I've cut almost everything I had written at first out of it completely.
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I can't get water to sit still.
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If I could have made Ben's wedding all about me and spent a full hour giving a toast, it might have gone like this.
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With one eye closed, measuring the beak, she said, “Daniel asked me earlier, ‘Why does it have to be right?’ And I think that’s a very good question.”
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Someone hacked into my account. I spent hours trying to get it figured out. Now, Google is charging ME MORE money.
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When I got home, I wondered if the coyote crossing my path could have been some kind of omen or symbol or indication of what I ought to expect in my life.
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Saturday — the day of Chicago's Bud Billiken Parade — was a cake-taking day of sorts; one of the best days of the entire year.
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Oscar Wilde said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
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I’m sitting in a corner at the Portland International Airport getting ready to fly back to Chicago, Illinois.
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Recently, my mom dug up her high school diaries. She left one out on the counter in our kitchen next to the toaster; this morning I read it over breakfast.
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Actually, as I am reflecting now from my high “I’m-a-real-writer” perch (on which, it should be noted, I am perfectly terrified), I think that maybe I just needed to be writing.
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I am on a train again. A train is my favorite place to be in the entire world. I know this now for sure because we just set out and my heart crushed in on itself and now I’m sitting at a booth in the lounge car smile-sobbing so hard someone came up to me and said, “You seem like you’re at a wedding, but I just wanted to check and see if you are ok.” I hugged that person. She left quickly.
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My friend George did an artist talk for our writing class last week in which he said something along the lines of (and I will not be able to write it as eloquently here), I understand that this is not fate; that this is a normal coincidence. But I don’t understand why one is considered more incredible or important than the other.
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This year I sat writing, listing, deleting, pacing, obsessively drawing, and feeling generally unable to deliver a piece of decent writing. After it was done I said, “I feel like I just gave birth, and I don’t even like the baby."
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I think that it makes sense to commemorate my thirtieth trip around the globe with a huge, loud LOVE FEST. Here goes.
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I have a recurring nightmare about a jolly, anthropomorphized wasp befriending me before sucking all of my memories out of my ears. “How do you feel?” The wasp says. I feel like I don’t want to hurt the wasp’s feelings, so I don’t tell him that I am empty and scared. I can remember my name and my mom’s face, but that’s all. I say, “I don’t feel as bad as I think you thought I would feel,” and then I pat the jolly wasp on his head.
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Yesterday the cartoonist and legendary demigod Lynda Barry taught my comics class. I had been looking forward to this day with a kind of sickness: I didn’t want the day to come because I enjoyed looking forward to it so much; when it was over, what was I supposed to look forward to? Now that the day has come and gone, I can answer that question with some confidence: Post-Lynda Barry, I am looking forward to, enthusiastically, the rest of my life.
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You know those really big moments in your life — the ones that act like vertexes on angles? You know: The shifts; the places where before this moment everything was one way, and afterwards, everything was another way. Common examples from literature, film, and lectures mothers give daughters are: the first night you sleep at someone else’s house; the day you get your first period; the first time you can’t eat off a children’s menu at a restaurant; your first kiss (and your first devastating break-up); when you go to college; the birth of your first child. For me, one of the most seminal moments like that came when I was finally allowed to ride the city bus by myself. This happened over the summer the year after eighth grade.
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When you move to Chicago, here is what people say to you: “Oh, whoa! Did you know it’s cold there?” They don’t usually phrase it as a question, but they say it like you have overlooked this fact. It’s as though they think they are announcing something particularly newsworthy that you, in your blind lust for a big city, have overlooked.
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I have been trying to draw what it feels like to be depressed.
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