Oct 20, 2022
I Sought a Good-Luck Charm to Write. I Found My Body Instead
To choose an omamori is to cast a wish.
On Ghosts, Gender, and Who Gets to Be Believed
Like most women and AFAB people, I’ve been trained from birth to mistrust my perceptions. Then I spent the night in a haunted house.
Sep 08, 2022
Trying to Escape the Trap of Digital Productivity
I felt sick with despair that I wasn’t out in the physical world, so I built a digital identity with the things I had to hand.
Aug 10, 2022
Finding Friendship and Community Through the World’s Hardest Quiz
The King William’s College Quiz is notoriously cryptic and uncompromising. For twenty-five years, my friend and I tried to get the perfect score.
Jun 28, 2022
Midge Hadley, the Pregnant Barbie
I wonder what roles I would have felt obligated to fill as an adult if Midge, the pregnant Barbie, were instead an astronaut, a divorcée, a bad friend.
May 16, 2022
On Playing Risk and Studying the Maps of Colonialism
Soon after I bought the game, I began to obsess over another map, one that also didn’t fully exist.
Mar 31, 2022
How to Decode Your Dreams and Predict Your Future
We knew ‘Zolar’s Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Dreams’ was absurd. But, as teenagers, we were thrilled by the idea of interpreting the secret symbols of the universe.
Mar 03, 2022
Every House Is a Haunted House
Everything present is made of the past—the cities we inhabit and the language we use and the clothes we wear and what they make us feel.
Oct 27, 2021
My Father, the Slingshot Master
For my father, the slingshot seems to offer a moment of creative flight, a brief escape. It isn’t the solution, but it keeps everything balanced.
May 25, 2021
An Ode to the Kamenoko Tawashi, the Turtle Brush
Natural, natural, everything natural. I’m a sucker for it, Shinto-ish environmentalist and object-worshipper that I am.
Jan 04, 2021
My Bicultural Comfort Food is the Spicy McChicken Sandwich
Both the sandwich and I were ‘made in China’ but with an undeniable Americanness.
Dec 09, 2020
I Hate This Peloton That I Love, or I Love This Peloton That I Hate
Everything I do is done behind a desk. And now, now? Now I can even use this Peloton. I don’t even need to run in the rain.
Dec 08, 2020
Las Cosas, Cosas Son: The Things We Give Up to Be Here
At detention centers, these prized possessions go straight into the trash. A devastating omen for the way immigrants are treated in this country.
Nov 16, 2020
Building a Home Used to Be Easy—Especially in ‘The Sims’
To me, these never felt like steps to sprint through on the way to simulating life, but life itself.
Jul 02, 2020
You Can Do Anything in Animal Crossing Except Escape Productivity Dread
As cliché as it’s become to say, I found myself needing this game in a way I could have never accounted for, even with all my years of fanboying.
Apr 23, 2020
Why I Love Terrible Kosher Pizza, and Other Mysteries of My Jewish Life
I am no gentile, but a Jew, with chill Jewish parents, who loves the pepper-and-onion slice at Alfie’s.
Feb 05, 2020
Finding My Inner Piece: How Puzzles Ease My Anxiety
It’s very calming, very methodical, very good if, say, someone you love has died, but you know the world cannot stop, and you can’t either.
Nov 13, 2019
For Sale: Wedding Dress, Worn Once
There’s an irritating coyness to the language around wedding expenses: they’re not expenses at all, they’re “investments.”
May 13, 2019
The Tiger in Harlem Who Helped Me Heal
All the buildings I walked by each day and thought nothing about now seemed like they contained the answers to questions it hadn’t occurred to me to ask.
Feb 26, 2019
