I Am Liking Myself
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” I will tell my children, “as long as you like yourself better than you like most other people.”
Mayonnaise: A Review
Four tablespoons, give or take, of pure, undiluted mayonnaise.
A Voyage Abroad, or: The Author’s Notes on a Trip Aboard the Victoria Clipper, Rendered into Rhyming Verse
As bags are grabbed and knots are lost
And papers stowed away unread
The ship approaches final berth
The clouds behind, the sun ahead
Leaving Home in Search of Home
Most people say that I shouldn’t let anything hold me back from doing great things. But I don’t have much desire to do great things. What are great things without the small things?
Live at KEXP: This Is the Kit
I stood ten feet away from Kate Stables in the front row of an audience that barely totaled twenty people, and yet This Is the Kit wasn’t playing for us. They didn’t even know we were there.
Out and Back
And I realized these are the first things: not medals or adventures, but the cinch of laces around a foot and reliable slide of mud and bitter perfume of sweat rising like smoke off shoulders.
The Death of What You Thought Was Your Soul
The last time I knew who I was I had acne, four AP classes, and a Bible in my senior photos.
The Onion That Is Our Waste Systems
We stood on an extension of a natural butte, but under the topsoil was a thousand feet of trash.
On Owning Guns
Whenever I tell people about this hunting trip, about my family’s tradition for the past ten years, I share it with a blend of defiance, pride, and defensiveness.
A Goodness
A few days later I was back in Seattle and it felt like coming home, like jumping into your bed’s cold sheets and warming them as you fall asleep. I feel bad about that, for loving two places at once.
