Philosophy

  • Love in the Time of Corona(virus)

    It is day six of the pandemic. The virus is everywhere now. It is hiding in plain sight, in places we forget, in kisses and sips from glasses and rubbing eyes and touching countertops. Breathing feels like a dangerous act, but it’s all that propels us forward. Breathing is the final frontier, and if going…

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  • This post is not for you, and other ramblings

    Don’t read on if you are expecting anything in particular. Don’t read on because you feel obliged to do so as my friend, or as my family, or as anyone who feels like they should do anything for any reason other than wanting to. Because this is very much a post about rejecting the omnipresent…

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  • Everything Israel: The Trip That Changed My Life

    Under a heavy veil of impenetrable darkness and a pledge of silence, thirty-nine gangly Jewish east-coasters clambered over unseen rocks and curving slopes in the Judaean Desert. We trekked up invisible mounds and crackling gravel, moving ever deeper into a valley far from the Bedouin tents that emitted radiant light into the surrounding land. The…

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  • Why I’m Not Wasting My Time with Trifles Anymore

    A brilliant mind once said, “It’s all about the love.” That brilliant mind was an eight year old version of myself with whom I believe I have very little in common. She liked pink more than purple and was afraid of the dark, thunderstorms, and Harry Potter. She wanted to be a dog groomer. Quite notably, a…

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  • Why I Marched

    On an unnervingly warm day in Chicago, the whole of Jackson Boulevard flooded. The tumult of over 150,000 voices overlapped, rose and fell, glazed the thoroughfare in the music of resistance. Chants of opposition, cries for the bodies of women, ownership of the streets, and the righteousness of democracy swelled under the hot sun, a gold dust miracle on…

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  • Travel Resolutions and Other Big Things

    It is my first post of 2017! Hello, new year! Hello, resolutions that will likely peter out by February! Please, stay awhile! (Especially you flaky resolutions. I see you loitering by the door). This year is different in that I, like I’m sure many people have, grown up a great deal. I am not setting…

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  • Florida, Nostalgia, and Ice Cream

    “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” -Emily Dickinson This is my eighteenth time visiting Florida. Every winter break has been spent in eighty degree weather, in palm trees coiled with decorative lights and hours soaking in chlorine. Every winter break, I eat at the same restaurants, say hello to the…

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  • A Day in Montreal

    I awoke last Saturday morning to winter in Montreal. It was not the biting sort of winter Chicago usually falls victim to, not the kind that says “boo” on one decisive day in late November when the day prior had been a balmy and unostentatious 65 degrees. No, this was winter with poise. But the trees, still dripping…

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  • The In-Between Times and What Comes After

    The other day I heard myself say the following words aloud: “I feel like my life hasn’t really started yet.” I might have been walking beneath the gradually changing leaves or driving with my hands clutched tightly on the steering wheel. I might have been staring into space, mind preoccupied with future things, faraway things, abstract…

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  • The Ambiguity of Pain Made (Slightly) Clearer

    “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.” -Rumi. When we were little, pain was as simple as a skinned knee or a vaccination at the annual doctor’s check-up. Pain was occasionally stomping our feet because we weren’t allowed to have any more candy. It was having to share our coloring books or our dollhouses, or…

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