Archives for September 2015

A story about a fiery fling.

The Core Stories | On the beauty of summer sunflowers.

Summer, you were a flame.

You were firsts and fireworks. You were bird-watching and basil. You were honeysuckle-sweet with serendipity.

You were new friends and not-so-new sewn closer. You were days of sun dapples and a certain Lisa Frank-toned sunset I may never forget.

You were carnivals, tubas booming, goldfish gleaming behind glass. You were one concert that left my throat sore for 48 hours. You were “Tiny Beautiful Things” and two mind-blowing movies and too many bowls and bags of popcorn. You were goopy ice cream spooned out by the pint, then its richness walked off with aimless wandering.

You were so many different rooftops — both sparkly Manhattan ones with shiny cocktail stirrers and the crumbly Brooklyn kind, gritty and graffiti-grizzled. You were laughter and tears and sometimes both at once.

You were bare feet and sweat like donut glaze. You were fresh freckles scattered across noses and skies star-sprinkled. Gray skies, too, and rain piled on rain, refreshing for a moment. You were fire hydrants exploded.

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A story about blue transition.

The Core Stories | Blue breaks open to gold.

Several nights ago, I dreamed that I found two tiny bird eggs abandoned on the ground, in danger of being trampled. They were as small as my thumbs and powdery blue.

I picked them up gently to carry them to safety and set them on a shaded bench, where they suddenly began to hatch before I’d expected. One gold beak peeked out after the other, cracking quietly through their shells, the chicks’ necks emerging slowly from the cool blue shadows and craning left and right for sunlight.

I remember worrying that I wasn’t sure how to care properly for those precious baby birds. I remember fearing that they might have been born too early to survive.

But mostly, I remember the bittersweet blueness of those tiny, perfect eggs before they fractured; the fragility of that soft phase just before impending change. Their vulnerable impermanence made them precious. Whether crushed by strangers’ feet or collapsing from within, those eggs were fated to fall apart, the way all sweet shells must ultimately crumble so that life can see the light — so that blue can give way to gold.

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A story about active remembrance.

The Core Stories | A reminder to "always remember."

I worry about slogans.

When we reduce big lessons to bite-size phrases, they become easy to swallow without chewing first. We consume the words quickly, like candy — because they’re prettily packaged, sweet and addictive, easy and alluring. Because everybody else seems to be saying them.

We forget to digest. We forget to read between the lines. We forget that the intricacies of our language have profound power to shape our interpretations, even when the shifts are subtle or subconscious.

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A story about hoarding + holding on.

The Core Stories | Love hard and let go.

I am one of those people who always has 3625714 internet tabs open at once.

Tabs from two weeks ago. Four weeks ago. Six weeks ago. Articles I don’t remember clicking and will likely never read. Google searches for things like “fun facts about armadillos” and “why is the sky blue.”

I collect seashells and stones. Pennies, in case they prove to be lucky.

I bought myself a bouquet of pink roses on my 24th birthday. The buds now sit in a small mug on my dresser, their blushing petals crisped to copper around the edges. My birthday was more than six months ago.

I have volumes of voicemails saved on my phone: from my parents, my sister, my friends. One from my grandmother. One from an ex whose face I haven’t seen in years.

I like to hold onto things. That’s why I write. That’s why I photograph. Perhaps it’s a learned fixation, instilled by my longtime journal-keeping habit, but it feels more like an inborn compulsion.

Collecting is a way of bracing against impending loss. Documenting is a method for fossilizing significant moments in the ever-changing story of my life.

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