On the bus into Montevideo a few months ago, I was curled up in a window seat reading the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally. It was an attempt to see how screenplays work—I told y’all, I want to write one about that magical afternoon in Bariloche—and also just a wildly entertaining read. I finished it with half an hour...
I’m leaving the Galapagos Islands in two days. I started packing yesterday, only to find that mold had colonized my big backpack, my hiking boots, my makeup bag, and every other cloth-based item in my possession that I hadn’t used daily. Each was covered in a thin layer of yellow-green fuzz, a result I perhaps should’ve foreseen when I stored...
The thing I miss most about home—more than good pizza, more than the wildly efficient superstores where you can get your shampoo and your asparagus and your prescriptions and a pair of socks all at the same damn time—is the sense of having my own physical space. Of having a room (because let’s be honest, in New York, a room...
This is the first post I’ve ever penned from inside a hospital. I’m currently in a private hospital in Cusco called Oxygen Medical Network Clinic. Last night, I came here in an ambulance—the drama of it all!—and was deposited first into a wheelchair, then into an elevator, and then into room 401, where I woke up this morning, having successfully...
From Manhattan, With Love When I first moved to New York, I refused to research restaurants. I didn’t want to rob myself of the experience of wandering around a neighborhood and peering down streets lined with potted perennials and into awning-shaded windows to get a sense of the vibe of a place, to scope out the relationship between waitstaff and...
In 10th-grade Spanish, we had to do a report on a Latin American city. I was assigned Montevideo, which I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce, so I flip-flopped between “Mon-tay-VID-ee-o” and “Montay-vid-AY-o” throughout my entire presentation. Since then, I hadn’t thought much about Uruguay or its capital city until I started planning my trip, and even then, I afforded...
(a companion post to “The Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors: Bedbugs in Puerto Natales”) (and, I deeply hope, the last of the series) I’m sitting at the kitchen counter, jamming to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love,” Sara’s stirring a simmering risotto, and we’re discussing the latest barrage of passive-aggressive texts from her ex; this Sunday night is...
I spent a few maddening, beautiful, indulgent days in Mendoza, and I’m going to tell you about them, but first, an abstract: Our characters in this edition include possibly the most irritating American the South American continent has ever seen, the dearly beloved Anne (first featured in our Puerto Natales comedy of errors), a trio of brothers committed to creating...
What actually counts as a passion in life? How much of it do you need to live a fulfilled existence? Can it be cobbled together in small bits, like a quilt made of scraps of fabric but warmth-providing in totality, or does it need to be more centralized, a blaze that burns through the contours of your life, defining them...