My Beyond-Human Companions
Always Rainbow: My furriest friend
I’d been begging for a Build-a-Bear for years. Every time I visited the mall, I couldn’t help but notice how their storefronts were just so colorful, and the bears oh-so-plentiful. But BABs were expensive (pretty similar to today’s prices, but with less inflation). Imagine my surprise when one day, my mom took me to the BAB store.
My gratitude journal
My IB Arts teacher introduced me to the idea of the gratitude journal. She asked students in our class to identify three things we felt thankful for in our lives. Soon, students began competing to see who could be more inventive with their gratitude after realizing that even the most mundane objects could be worthy of a thank-you note.
Cooking won’t hold your hand
Cooking is a friend that doesn’t hold your hand. It leaves you to figure things out on your own: mischievous, unforgiving and always watching. If you’re using a recipe, it can act like an unhelpful supervisor, setting expectations without ever checking in.
An (almost nightly) cookie stealing ritual
If you look past the chaotic mess of a college student’s desk — scattered with free stickers, pens, the half-empty Brita and a plant that’s probably a couple of seconds from death, you’re bound to see something that looks like “trash.” For my roommate and me, that trash takes the form of a round plastic box filled with cookies.
The rituals that bring me back
Fall always feels like a pause I didn’t know I needed. It feels like a change that pulls me back to focus on myself and escape the chaos. Between long study nights, half-finished conversations and the constant rush to keep up, I forget what it feels like to just be.
The things I carry
I firmly believe that all you really have to do to get to know someone is to look through their bag (with consent, of course). The contents of a college student’s backpack tend to be fairly uniform: a water bottle, lunch (maybe), pens, pencils, an iPad — but the weight of those objects is not immediately visible.
Through the looking glass: A love letter to my digital camera
I see her before she sees me. She lifts me from the desk, fingertips brushing the smudges from my lens, and for a moment, the world sharpens. We’ve done this before: she presses a button, and with a mechanical click, I capture her world.
The modern Prometheus
I wrote a poem once titled “The Modern Prometheus,” one that had to do with Victor Frankenstein and the curse of ambition. I don’t mean for it to be as dramatic as it sounds — even though I tend to play into the tortured genius angle too much sometimes.
Katara, Toph and Suki: my feminist origin story
I sat on the floor a lot as a kid. I would often sit in front of our family television — a smaller, chunky VIZIO model at the time — and watch whatever episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) was airing on Nickelodeon.
Room tour
Welcome! Sorry the elevator took so long — it tends to do that. You can take your shoes off by the door. One of my favorite things about this room is the window straight ahead. Since the whole space is shaped like a long hallway, the afternoon sun really floods in — over my desk chair especially.