Bloom and Grow
I think when we look down on children it’s because we have momentarily, or perhaps chronically, forgotten that little kid inside earnestly whispering, “Don’t forget me. I’m still here.”
The Church at Rocamadour
She is
Smoke-tinted,
Wood and silver,
Vessel of the divine
And of acceptance
This Was the Year of Living
This was the year of living with my parents, with my best friends, with a stranger. This was the year of mint tea and French TV shows, of cooking for my friends and of touching the North Sea.
Crying on Public Transit
Eventually you have to look these fears in the face, and you have to sit with the things, both true and false, that you believe about yourself.
Autumnal
I learned to love the fall, to really love it, at the foothills of the French Alps, in October, two months after my friend drowned in Lake Michigan.
Writing the Where
These three things struck me about the way Gopnik writes about place. Perhaps they contain a few lessons that will help us in writing about where we’re from, where we are, and where we’re yet to go.
Notes From Captivity
0734:
Bobby pin located by companion, lock picking commenced. She picks. I pick. The lock is deemed unpickable.
Nothing Goes as Planned
Last fall, my much-delayed Megabus dropped me off in Chinatown at 2:30 a.m. I had seven percent battery life, four dollars in cash, and no idea how to get to Brooklyn.
Stumbling Upon Poetry in Paris
I am having a conversation in broken English outside a bar with a man named Matthieu. He brought up the attacks before I did, which is good, because I was terrified to bring it up, and not even sure if I should. “You are from New York, so you understand,” he explained.
Swinging
So we turned our backs on the ocean and found one of the last things we expected to find on the beach in France: a ping pong tournament.
