Summer Postcards 2019
Summer Postcard: Starcrew
I sought to take a picture of this very moment, to leave an imprint to look back upon, but I realized that no attempt at photographic mimesis could ever capture the boundless freedom and comfort I experienced.
Summer Postcard: From a Parking Lot
But what I do know is this: If we forget the past in an attempt to move forward, we will begin to see ourselves move back.
Summer Postcard: Fish, Love, Music
Salmonfest is kind of like Woodstock, if Woodstock were fish-themed and held in a seaside village in Alaska.
Summer Postcard: June Bugs
Where Boston let me forget over the past two years, Arizona reminded me in gentle breaths when I returned this summer.
Summer Postcard: Karak Spicy
Within a society marked by stark inequality, all converge for karak and conversation at the edge of the Gulf.
Summer Postcard: Back in Time
I felt a little twinge of sadness I couldn’t explain at first. It was the twinge of realizing, while I was in it, that this moment would become a memory — something I could never recreate in exactly the same way again.
Summer Postcard: Humility
These structures and monuments are impressive, enduring, and timeless, designed and set as allusions to the very country they represent. But more than symbols, they also serve an important purpose: They remind you how insignificant you are.
Summer Postcard: Packing for the Final Trip
The family convened at his house in the aftermath to put everything in order. And it was in this ordering that I found a certain treasure, buried in a messy kitchen-table-tableau of dead pens and toast crumbs and slung-open scientific journals.
Summer Postcard: Boba in Vietnam
My students evinced a desire to change the status quo and a genuine belief in their capacity to effect change. When they grow up and become the generation in power, they told me, their views will rein.
Summer Postcard: Organ Meats
I have been thinking about organ meats a lot this summer because I have been thinking about my grandfather, who was recently diagnosed with rapidly progressing dementia.
Summer Postcard: Wasting Away
Japan doesn’t need trash cans in the streets because their alternative to public bins isn’t littering. They care for their communities in the best way possible: keeping them clean.
Summer Postcard: The Subway Sings a Strange Song
The sun is setting on Cabildo. As I surge from within the city’s vein, the train running in its tunnels below, I am struck by the colors dancing into the horizon.
Summer Postcard: Glory and Gore
As the swaying passenger bus rocked me in and out of sleep, I realized that what I was seeing was not a glitch or illusion, but rather a crowd of people headed exactly where I was headed: to the running of the bulls in Pamplona.