At 4 a.m. I am awakened by a vision of the river goddess. I am told without words that she saved baachan from drowning. After the funeral of my great-baachan. After a mokugyo drum was broken through. After a shaman sprinkled gold dust into the house’s fire.
(nonfiction)
The holes breathed damp breath that wasn’t quite alive but wasn’t dead either. It takes little to make beauty out of wreckage, wreckage out of beauty. Winter sun gleams in the spray, constellates in the ice. A Buick skids from the road and tumbles across a bare field.
(nonfiction)
Discovering Tarkovsky upended my attempt to build a coherent, if radically reduced, worldview post-Iraq. Ten years after leaving the military I found myself replaying certain scenes from his Solaris and Stalker well into the early morning hours, with no thought to plot, or social relevance, just the sound and absence and the want and the curious, sacred fullness that followed these unanchored gaps in experience.
(nonfiction)
When I traveled to Geneva, no matter what else was on the agenda, a reservation at the Boeuf Rouge was required. I never changed my order from quenelle de brochet. I looked forward to the quenelles more than any other part of my visit; they were a reliable, savory anchor in my itinerant young life.
(nonfiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 