Trees in Rhode Island stand tall and thin, reaching toward the deep-blue sky with their spindly branches. From the window of a train speeding from Providence to Boston, I watch them stretch, toward the clouds, toward each other, standing proud and bare in the icy earth. On the CalTrain from my hometown ...
My mother used to give my sister and me glass hearts. The ritual was based on the book The Kissing Hand—the story of Chester Raccoon, who is terrified to start kindergarten. Throughout the story, his mother reassures him of the wonderful things he will discover at school, like friends, toys, and books. ...
At Brown, so many of us are doing a lot, all the time, everywhere. We all have limitless combinations of jobs, classes, clubs, and other commitments. We bounce from this event to that interview to that section to the library, and repeat it all the next day.
The cyberpunk city is nocturnal—buildings that skewer the layer of clouds in the sky with their billboards. Neon Chinese characters decorate dark alleyways with splotches of artificial color. Hovercrafts and other extreme feats of technology layer over a dilapidated urban landscape. And the main character ...
할머니 paints, but her paintings never really leave the apartment. There must be over 40 canvases scattered around, propped up on the floor in sets of three or four so you can sort through them like vinyl in a record shop. I discover six older ones I’ve never seen before when I follow her to her ...
I left my home in Springfield, Missouri when I was 18 to attend college in Providence, Rhode Island. As the valedictorian of my high school class and recent co-star of a public tragedy in my hometown, my final months in the comforting hollows of the Ozarks were filled with warnings, worry, and a taste ...
It was not long after we met Valentina that we learned about the Coldplay dollar.
I used to tell people I hated country music. Growing up in the conservative suburbs of the Deep South, hating country music was a quiet rebellion against a culture that intrinsically did not align with my values. Throughout high school, I walked a wide berth around the Morgan Wallen tours that passed ...
He took to the road before dawn, the moon still visible through the early March mist. The night before, he had patched his torn trousers and fixed a new strap to his hat. He was approaching fifty, gray hairs frosting his head, and applied mugwort to his legs to strengthen them for the journey.
The Alps presented a problem. The mountains, spotted with white provincial houses angled on the slopes, flanked our train car. This day of travel was an opportunity to experience rustic clothing and an aestheticization of mountain life so extreme I’m surprised we didn’t go looking for edelweiss—lederhosen ...
Preparing for a spirit circle is easier than you might think.
We are born into clumsy bodies. We flail around with fat fingers as we learn to make sense of the fuzzy shapes around us, and to assert important truths like “ba” and “ga.” As we grow, we are given a fuller set of words to wrap our hands around, including words that are supposed to describe ...
note: contains version translated into Spanish at the end.
twinship
June 6, 2008 was the first time I saw an iPhone. I was sitting in a Jewish deli next to the hospital where my mother was in labor with my brother. At the time, I only knew the flip phones I saw in movies and the Blackberries my parents used, which solely piqued my interest when they let me borrow one ...
Solutions by The State News
