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On Writing

There have been several attempts at developing stories of wonder and tragedy throughout my life. At first, the stories were variations on the fictions I would consume in the popular media. Kids entering a haunted house only to be butchered. A magical cave of knowledge and life, lions and serpents. Lover’s love among a jarring apocalypse. These are only the stories that I remember. Then, in short, life came along to shake things up. Looking back, the original characters were things that only a child could enthusiastically conceive of – ideal or demonic caricatures of good and evil. But now, things are different. So what should writing be for me? What kind of material suits me? I think the answer to this is simple. Let’s just do it , and see. On a bright, sunny afternoon, Carla waltzed into the foyer of The Ritz-Carlton with the pomp of a queen and the grace of a dancer. The moment she strode in the door, she flushed with pride as she felt a dozen eyes turn and gaze her way. Chi
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Making Sense 1

 What ways are there of making sense of the world, and how can we measure their varying degrees of effectiveness? We paddle through life on a river of emotions. These emotions can be attributed to any number of things, from loving dolphins to despising floor lamps. Let us call the objects of considered in our attention at any given moment, the present stimuli. It may be unfair to attribute all drives to the vague term of "emotion", but no categories are perfect - let us pursue this until absurdity arises. Under this theory, things make a whole lot of sense: if we assume that an emotion can be attributed to any set of present stimuli (green, leafy foliage versus smiling faces of approval) with some being more salient to certain people than others (a botanist versus a comedian) this does not run counter to the milieu of individual tastes that crowd our melting pot. Now, what happens to emotions as time goes on? We know for a fact that they change, to varying degrees. A honking
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Delicious Moments

Standing on a streetcorner, my eyes to the waxing and waning orange-yellow glow of the streetlamp. I see the soft pink of the paint off a nearby doorway, the feathery rustling of leaves, the vibrant reds and yellow reflecting off the wet pavement, casting the entire street under an evocative luminescence. And what can we do but drift through life in hopes of these incandescent moments catching our eyes, taking us if only for a moment to a world so familiar yet so unknown. Unbeknownst to our timidly limited perspectives, these beautiful fleeting moments of elegance and grace are as ever present as the tingling of atmosphere on our skin; as the murmurous thumps of our own heart. What if this was universal? What if, under all the meaningless suffering of people there is a truth that is good and beautiful? And yet, if this was true - let us assume for a moment that it was - then there may indeed exist a way to mine our confusing psyches for this attitude. Then this truth should underlie al
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Woe, this is fun

Why do we let ourselves be lured into attractive promises of tender and loving grace, while the inevitability of transience hovers above our heads as clouds of irony? Was dumped today, pretty abruptly too. Along with this, a friend shared some poetry with me that was directly salient with this situation. The poems were: “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, and “Sonnet 29” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Here are the links: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148560/pity-me-not-because-the-light-of-day https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners She speaks of the throes and woes of love initially as transient yet periodic; as “the light of day” which “at close of day no longer walks the sky”, as wintry “fields and thickets”, among other poignant metaphors. Through this, there is a sense of persistence and endurance, saying “pity me not”. She arrives at a new point on line 7, of “man’s desire” being “hushed so soon” whence he will “no longer look with love on me”. But she
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