I had started this blog with just my name, but it is not about me as a person, my writing here is meant to be me as a thinking, observing participant in our world. Collective failure was going to be my first entry, which seemed like a terribly depressing notion. I’d pondered, “will I simply be…
not the mums
I live in a fast gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia. This form of gentrification is occurring as the small slice of white, middle class blocks keep expanding Northward. So it is not necessarily just young hipsters and it is not a first sighting of white folks. The attitude I most attribute to gentrification is the suburban…
to hell in a handbasket
What does success look like as we flail towards hell in a handbasket? I interpret that phrase to mean a lack of accountability, a lull into complacency, passivity – a space between being trapped and self-imposed constraints. In looking up the phrase a painting from 1515 is referenced, “Hieronymous Bosch painting “The Haywain” (c. 1515) (in the Prado,…
perhaps the only story I need to tell
He gets back in the silver sedan, carrying away my whole sense of self. I think about going home, and instead have another beer at the cafe before closing time. I turn to go home, stop at the bodega for another beer, and walk past my house to sit by the river. I am still…
people are hard for me
Other people can be really hard for me. I often seem outgoing, loud, engaging, humorous, charismatic, when I’m not moody, overly introspective, prickly, and self-involved. I am an only child who told her deepest secrets to a stuffed bear, that I still have; but now he sits on a shelf so that I don’t tear…
Never Lunchables
One of my favorite pieces of writing was selected by Silver Needle Press, a new literary and artistic collective that strives to foster creative community through editorial accessibility and artist involvement. The story – Never Lunchables – is dedicated to my parents and how they knew about the power of food and raised me to have a…
Bump in the Road by Amelie Rose Baker
via Bump in the Road by Amelie Rose Baker
why yoga was miserable today
Going to a yoga class has become a beacon to a fulfilled life, having a home yoga practice an enlightened life, and a yogi way of life a pathway to the sacred. But yoga classes are more often miserable in multi-dimensional ways. Other reasons yoga class may be miserable: it was the kind started by…
capitalism has always kept families apart
My paternal grandmother will pass soon, we have been told by doctors. She is 95 and has had a pretty awesome life. I will be able to attend her service, and even see her a few times before. It will cost $80 is gas for the drive back and forth, a little more for tolls….
The PH.D. I earned in my sleep
Stress dreams are a reflection of the seen and unseen stress of our waking lives. In general they are not fantasies set in unreal landscapes cavorting with mystical animals. Stress dreams too often are a photocopy of the days – a little blurred, lacking detail, washed out colors but intensified reactions, complex inner narratives, and…
nostalgia, trauma, and gentrification
Nostalgia, trauma, and gentrification. If your childhood was spent somewhere safe and quiet, with a cul-d-sac or winding country roads and square footage for each member of the family, including the dog – this may not apply to you. If you come from a place with a name not even recognized the next county over,…
drunk man travels well
After the frustration, then anger, than doubt and some tears, something else has to win. The reality of traveling demands one simply succumbs. I have been reminding myself of the drunk driver who survives the lamppost simply because he is drunk. Yes it is an ugly secret that doesn’t get public service announcements or after-school…
how to get your eyebrows on fleek (or why I went to India when I was seventeen)
This piece has very little to do with eyebrows and don’t worry if you don’t know what the term “on fleek” means. If you are here for style advice your google algorithm has been hacked. Today I went to the South Asian woman who uses the technique of threading to shape eyebrows. My first time…
