Years ago, when I was nomadic full-time, I wrote in a notebook that I thought one needed to be in a place for 6 weeks to fully feel lived-in—to get some kind of first real understanding of a city. I don’t know the mathematics of how I came to that number (likely none) but I’ve […]
Biblioteca Vasconcelos is a $100 million library with sawtooth windows spanning wide above floating bookshelves. It is a massive rectangular affair, longer than a football field with seven, maybe eight stories going upward. Well, stories isn’t quite the right word. More like seven or eight landing levels with bookshelves. Each level has a hallway running […]
I want to tell you a story about my favorite band, Pearl Jam. It’s a story I’ve thought a lot about. It’s a story of compassion, death, art, redemption, and much more. The story starts on September 29, 1996. The scene is a now-torn-down outdoor stadium on Randalls Island, just outside Manhattan. The stadium holds […]
Well, 2018 is stubbing out its cigar. Closing its chapter. It was an important chapter in my life. In the story of my life it’d be a chapter with a true character turn, a tension point in the plot. This year was a turn from a bit of normalcy into a great unknown. A great […]
This colorful lovely is a house in New Orleans. For some months, over half a decade ago, it was a house that I called home. Fresh with a new paint coat of whatever colors you’d call those, the house looks as full of its character now as it did those years ago. But this was […]
This article was written for my other site, which features a blog dedicated solely to my pursuits in writing. It’s part of a series I’m doing of culled-together writing advices and how I’m trying to use those advices to write my first novel. This was a more personal one, so I thought I’d post it […]
You’re probably not curious, but I’ll tell you something anyway. As it stands right now, my third favorite album of all time is this. My second favorite is this. And my favorite album of all time? Well it begins with these lines…. Early one morning, the sun was shining I was laying in bed Wondering […]
I believe kids these days would put it like this: this article is giving me life rn. It certainly jarred some life in and out of me. Wow. Just wow. I read it without knowing who the author was (I’ll get to that) and was immediately taken with the essay’s words. It, as the title […]
At the end of August 2011, I flew from South Korea back to the United States. I had spent a full year living near Seoul and a full year not being in the United States. It was, and still is, the longest sustained travel/living abroad experience of my life. And at the end of August […]
I’ve been in Laos for nine days now, and I leave tonight. Despite daily downpours (it’s rainy season), it’s been a really fantastic trip here. There are a few reasons for this, so I’ll go through some of those. (1) Laos is very, very chill. In some travel blogs for Vang Vieng (the first city […]
