Category: Reflections

The Night Bus

As the Umatter bus passes Tower, it is stopped by a man standing in the middle of the street.  His arms are spread out above him and he’s staring into the sky as if deep in prayer.

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For Yan Pei-Ming, One Portrait Size Fits All

“As I sat on the bench in the center of the exhibition room, dwarfed by the mammoth panels of the tryptic, I considered my reaction.”

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The Name of God

My first reaction was an unsettled, “What the heck?” Followed by a pissed, “Wow, way over the line.” Finally settling on, “Crap—now what?” From the back cover of the Nass, the Hebrew name of God, the holy Tetragrammaton, was staring up at me with the menacing grin of a camper who just got away with stealing food from the kitchen.

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Naked and Unafraid

My communal showering journey

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Telescoping Memories

To halve and to hold.

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Confessions

Songs of myself.

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Moments of Dreams: Dawes in Six Albums and Seven Stories

“In my moments of dogged hope, I would play “Moon in the Water,” an acoustic ballad where Goldsmith proclaims that ‘Love is for the fighter / Born to lose but never quit / Swinging for the moon in the water.’”

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A Summer of Luddism

“I didn’t even think about my phone at all, didn’t start at a phantom buzz in my pocket or stop what I was doing to look over at the device when I thought I saw its screen light up.”

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Hello, My Name Is ______.

I was seventeen. A senior second semester saturated with drugs, alcohol and bad decisions written off as “youth” had ended in a hospital bed on prom night, and, subsequently, in daily, forced AA meetings. I’d thought I was on top of the world: going to an Ivy League school, surrounded by friends, graduating top of my class.

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Prayers for My Homecoming

“Sometimes my body just wants me and I give her me. Then we are good to each other: the wave rushing toward the shore, crashing violently, then retreating back into herself.”

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Racial Profile

Before I saw a protest on the night of the Ferguson verdict, I was a cynic who idly by and did nothing but criticize as my brothers and sisters fought for change.

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No Shave November

As a man who is, how shall I say, genetically endowed with the gift of growing facial hair at a fast and heavy pace, I had always been a little curious about beard-growing.

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