Things
On Jellyfish and the Fear of Touch
Early in the trip, the jellyfishes begin to take on the quality of metaphor.
I Sought a Good-Luck Charm to Write. I Found My Body Instead
To choose an omamori is to cast a wish.
On Ghosts, Gender, and Who Gets to Be Believed
Like most women and AFAB people, I’ve been trained from birth to mistrust my perceptions. Then I spent the night in a haunted house.
Trying to Escape the Trap of Digital Productivity
I felt sick with despair that I wasn’t out in the physical world, so I built a digital identity with the things I had to hand.
Finding Friendship and Community Through the World’s Hardest Quiz
The King William’s College Quiz is notoriously cryptic and uncompromising. For twenty-five years, my friend and I tried to get the perfect score.
Midge Hadley, the Pregnant Barbie
I wonder what roles I would have felt obligated to fill as an adult if Midge, the pregnant Barbie, were instead an astronaut, a divorcée, a bad friend.
On Playing Risk and Studying the Maps of Colonialism
Soon after I bought the game, I began to obsess over another map, one that also didn’t fully exist.
How to Decode Your Dreams and Predict Your Future
We knew ‘Zolar’s Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Dreams’ was absurd. But, as teenagers, we were thrilled by the idea of interpreting the secret symbols of the universe.
Every House Is a Haunted House
Everything present is made of the past—the cities we inhabit and the language we use and the clothes we wear and what they make us feel.
My Father, the Slingshot Master
For my father, the slingshot seems to offer a moment of creative flight, a brief escape. It isn’t the solution, but it keeps everything balanced.
