I’m writing this on the road south from San Sebastián. I’m wearing jeans that button all the way up, though right now the top button is undone, because in the hour before leaving this goodie bag of a city — small, cheap joys on every corner, wrapped up in a bright cerulean bay — I left no taste untasted. That’s...
I am behind on things that I, if not the U.S. government, recognize as entirely arbitrary. My tax returns. (I filed for an extension though, don’t you worry!) Getting my gallery wall framed and up in my new house. (More on that in a second.) Writing and posting this Q1 2022 goals check-in. I’m embracing being behind. It’s the Spanish...
I hold no illusions that the world will change when the clock strikes midnight tonight. We will still be living in a country that is mismanaging a pandemic, built on a capitalistic system that disproportionally punishes people of color, led by an out-of-touch man who won’t do enough to change the status quo (even if he’s from a different party...
Yesterday, I started crying in a pedicure chair. I’d gone back to the place where I'd gotten a manicure the week before and where I’d had to bail on my planned pedicure because it was the Friday of Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, and I was running late. (I had to be at a friend’s...
From Backpack to Buenos Aires: New Home, Language, Life It's happened a few times that Diego and I have been in some public space in Buenos Aires—the wine aisle in the grocery store, the Bosques of Palermo, walking down Santa Fe—when, upon hearing someone speaking English, I immediately rubberneck in their direction, my ears straining to catch those whispers of...
Up until this year, my longest romantic relationship was a few weeks of infatuation and awkward makeouts that I’d shared with another knock-kneed fourteen-year-old during my freshman year of high school. My store of relationship understanding was pulled in equal parts from having watched Friends from pilot to finale two times through; having read novels, many of which featured a...
I wanted to love New Zealand. I bought my flights here in a passionate tizzy, psyched to see my sister and to explore the land that sparked a thousand movies. I wanted to bounce around various pieces of gorgeous scenery, communing with nature and losing myself in the reflections of lakes under mountains and long stretches of blue-green sea. I...
I used to write fanfiction. Lots of it. Harry Potter, mostly, which was kind of strange because I wasn’t even that obsessed with the books themselves. I’d skimmed through the first couple, gotten pretty into The Goblet of Fire, and started writing my own storyline and posting it online. Later, I read The Half-Blood Prince […]
The six of us arrived at Tayrona National Park groggy and simultaneously over- and under-prepared. Ally’s backpack contained two and a half liters of water and three packages of lunchmeat (necessary), but also a bag of rice he’d forgotten to take out that added a kilo of weight (less than necessary); Sean was carrying a single plastic grocery bag full...