It’s hard to sort out after all these years when I really started to care about MUSIC as a THING. It played such a huge role in my life, since before I was even conceived, that it’s almost no wonder I haven’t thought about it much. Except to know the music I wanted to listen […]

I approach the monastery of green corrugated steel in a forest of cedar and hemlock. Film badges and radiation dosimeters line the rack by the gate. I clip mine to my belt and enter. It’s a typical Pacific Northwest night. The cool, misty air caresses my face with the clean smell of evergreens. I cross […]

A viewing for a twenty-something isn’t normal and everyone knows it. People struggle with the proper facial expression, whom to greet, where to look, when to move, how long to stare at each picture, whether to hang up a coat or drape it over an arm. It can be a forty-five-minute utterly self-centered struggle over […]

  When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. —Andy Warhol Under the heading “Yes, commas DO save lives,” are three items—T-shirt, sweatshirt, and 7” x 12” plaque, all in a color described as Chocolate—bearing two lines: Let’s Eat Grandma and Let’s Eat, Grandma. This is exactly the type of gift […]

a violation An official-looking envelope arrived for me through intercampus mail labeled, “Your Ticket Package.” We had recently outsourced security to a private firm—although no one yet, to my knowledge, had observed a new presence on campus. I opened the package and several forms spilled out. One appeared to be a survey; another, a list […]

The hum was inescapable, stealing my sleep. The hum dominated, demanding attention, obedience. The hum made me frantic for silence. And my anguish urged me to confront it. For several long years, I had searched for strategies to untangle the snarls in my marriage. By this point, I had retreated to the guest room at […]

Marie noticed that their mother hadn’t re-braided Lulu’s hair in three days. It frizzed out in light brown puffs from each turn of the weave, though the sun-gold ends still curled in a perfect Shirley Temple coil below the elastic hairbands. Lulu sat at the kitchen table, picking at the edge of the chipped copper […]

Much of what I’ve learned about life comes from plants—the seemingly endless varieties my father planted around our homes in towns along India’s west coast. Each time we moved, my father yanked us from the ground, tap roots and all, and replanted us elsewhere, he in the center, the trunk of a great old banyan […]

1. Exposition Graduate school English literature symposium. Presentation on orientalism, as I am in my Edward Said phase (which came after my Plath obsession but before my Frantz Fanon kick). I work in some stuff about the occupation of Palestine, the suppression of its artistic and political voice. Orientalizing is feminizing the other, as a […]

The late-morning Nigerian sun sets the sky ablaze, forcing me to squint. I can’t tell for sure which two boys scuffle in the dusty courtyard, but I fear I know the smaller one. Regrettably, in the month I have been volunteering at this primary school, I’ve come to recognize the haphazard swinging of his arm […]