the angle of the hull

When I was young, there was a painting of a ship at sea…somewhere. By that, I mean somewhere in the house, in some room. Thinking about it now, I’m not completely sure it actually existed, but there is a firmly etched impression in my mind of a stoic brigantine precariously carving its prow through the…

i guess this is about travel

The funny thing about traveling isn’t the glut of “new”: new places, tastes, sensations, languages, people. A hot apocalyptic wind rolling over gray-white cement at the Denver airport; the liminal, oddly moving scent of European laundry detergent; a sea of faces, unfamiliar in the most real and abstract ways. It’s that last one that weirds…

the moonlight suits you

part one: About wielding power: it’s not like it’s not commonplace. We are so surrounded by illusion that it becomes hyper real. I have semiotician friends, postmodern lovers. I can draw the bowl of fruit, I can write about it, I can smell it if I try, but I don’t think I can see it….

lex parsimoniae / a bad master

“You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.” Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Digging below is a pastime. I imagine—no, I envision—the shovel, and make sure it’s big, sturdy, sharp. The kind that pierces loam, cracking through the…

octo-what?

There was a tattoo shop on a side street of a huge, unknown city. It was probably my memory of New York but it tasted like LA. My steps were light and steady but it’s like imagining yourself jumping rope—even though your mind is clear with its directives, you’re still tripping over your own feet….

silk.

I was wondering about silk. In middle school, I had two silk blouses that I loved. One was fuschia, the other deep emerald green, leaning teal. They were items of clothing that held symbolic weight—they made me feel older, more like a woman than an eleven-year-old girl. I wasn’t yet ready for a bra, and…

icarus.

It will reach 80 degrees today, but the morning is the kind of gray where the rolling fog just looks like air, like the matching sky. You can hide all your secrets in a thick mist like this, but it’s a risk; the next clear day will dissipate all cover, so you better be out of…