Reflections on Projection and Refraction — A detour up a windy hill in The Middle of Nowhere, Arizona leads to the heart of Jerome: a burnt down 19th century brothel, now home to the most prominent dealer of rare kaleidoscopes in the world. I was silently seeking an adventure but couldn’t have come up with this…

A Cilantro-Hater’s Attempt at Finding Balance in a Polarized World — Unlike the other 300,000 members of the I Hate Coriander (cilantro) Facebook group, I try my best to forgive the bits that inevitably slide into my Al Pastor tacos. I wouldn’t choose to be a Cilantrophobe in a Mexican household, but the experience is undeniable. One tiny fragment of a…

A projection of my issues with perfectionism and convenience culture onto an innocent inanimate object — This super convenient “chork” makes me feel a little dead inside. Maybe it’s because the almost trendy hotel where I got it feels empty beside my memories at Crazy Fish, my family’s old sushi spot, where I learned to use chopsticks for the first time. I miss the marathon posters…

Untangling the conflated joy of anticipation & memory to more fully savor the present moment — “What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?” “Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best — ” and then he had to stop and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which…

But no matter how much of the refined or synthetic you consume, the rawest form of honey will always be you — “What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.” — Olivia Laing For some reason heart matters always seem more digestible through the stomach, just as stomach matters seem to flow easier through the…

What social withdrawal can teach us about belonging & othering, identity fabrication, and the commodification of community — “In a strange room, you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were.” - William Faulkner As an anxiously attached kid, I’ve always…

How to make sense of a world where “I can’t breath” is spray painted all over the streets while the country is in desperate need of ventilators. — What did your life look like on March 14th? If it wasn’t the first official day of quarantine, I would have been mid-air on a one-way flight to Brooklyn, moving all my stuff to a little loft close enough to the ferry to take the East River to work. Just…

The First Love Letter Ever Written to the Interstate 10 — You can say you know this city well if you recognize the smell under the Jefferson entrance to the I-10 freeway going East. Maybe you’ve been here too long if you can pin it as freshly baked sourdough and apricot pistachio scones being baked at The Larder commissary kitchen behind…

What USC’s beloved student-run coffee clubhouse taught me about creative freedom These are just a few of the Wild Boys I spent four years making milkshakes with behind the bar at Ground Zero. There were twenty of us living together, running and operating a coffee shop/milkshake bar/music venue out of…