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Raged Harder

Posted on 1 min read

I’m in my hometown again to visit my grandmother. She continues to have slipped further away every time that I return. Her pride has remained though; she fought and raged against this world harder than anyone I have ever met, and that continues even now. I admire, empathize, and am repelled by the way she approached this life. Ninety-six years, however you get there, is an accomplishment. Most of this last year with her has been in the rest home. Even here her pride refuses to let her eat with the other residents, and yet she remains cheerful and funny with the nurses. She swings wildly between an uncompromised attitude …

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ROA

When I was 15 I saw the movie The Rules of Attraction. Incomplete and meandering, it’s an easy movie to hate. And yet it held me like no other movie before. It was for me, the most revolutionary thing I had ever seen, and so in that sense it accomplished everything that it set out to do. Where other movies were escapism from reality, this was a promise of a future to come. I still vividly remember the basement I sat in when I watched the movie, and the looks of revolt on my friends’ faces at the debasing crisscrossing storylines. I once heard the director say it ‘was a …

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The Blue Line

Posted on 2 min read

As I’m watching the de-icing of jets on the Frankfurt airport tarmac, wrapped in a music playlist I put together a lifetime ago in Madrid, a strange realization comes over me: I don’t have a desire to live in Chicago again. I love that city so much. But in this moment, my time there feels complete. The soft spot will remain, but I’ve carried around the regret of not choosing to move back there when returning to the US for years, possibly for as long as I’ve lived in Colorado. The beauty and grime that mix in the most uncontrived way possible has always captivated me. The other great American …

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Technology is not Culture

In the airline seat I grow restless. I watch as the teenager next to me purchases wifi to rip through Instagram, and then Snapchat. He moves faster than I could ever consume the information. When I was younger, and people would talk about their disgust for technology, it always revolved around the speed of things: shortening attention spans, more information, less human interaction. That’s how the fear of technology was explained to me. I always thought I would be fine, that the fear wouldn’t find me, because even if I couldn’t keep up to date, I believed that I could empathize with the desire to move faster. But as I …

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Closing Doors

It’s raining, but pulsating with light, when I wake up. I walk towards the glow of the window, and look out across the patio, and into a courtyard that seems slapdash and tight. The buildings surrounding me are all about the same height, and all I can see rising above the skyline are the cranes of new construction. As I wake, I realize I’ve never seen San Francisco in the daytime. I’m embarrassed of the fact, given the industry I’m in, and my love of film noir. I need to find a map to get my bearings, as the hills and the flat height of the construction, make it impossible …

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In This Moment, I Know

Posted on 1 min read

My daughter is sick. We go to the zoo but she refuses to walk, and so I carry her on my shoulders. She won’t speak, but only points at things she wants. Eventually she points to a bench, and we sit down. She sits a few feet way from me, but as she get more and more tired, she slowly closes the distance between us. Finally, she rests against my shoulder, and closes her eyes. I pick her up, and hold her in my arms. Instinctively her hands burrow into my coat, and she falls asleep almost instantaneously. As she breathes, I rest my cheek against hers, and I realize …

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