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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 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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  • 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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  • The Great Intangible Thing that Makes Our Lives Glow

    “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” -Mother Theresa. One of the most dangerous fallacies we often give credence to is that at some point our hearts reach a maximum capacity. We place a ceiling on the amount of love we are permitted to spread, and once we hit it, we resign ourselves…

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  • Photoblog of Greece + QOTW

    I thought I’d start doing a Quote Of The Week, seeing as I am frequently inspired by the words of writers and, more specifically, their thoughts on travel. Here is a brilliant one from Mark Twain: “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth…

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