Essays

Aug 26
12 min

Widen the Net of the Flesh

Note: This is an essay originally sent to subscribers on my mailing list, where I send essays every 1-2 months. If you would like to...

Aug 7
7 min

On bodies, souls, and indigenous ontologies

Note: this is not a full essay, but a segment taken from a longer piece sent to subscribers. If you want to receive essays in your inbox...

Jun 28
14 min

Great are the Multitudes

Note: This is an essay originally sent to subscribers on my mailing list, where I send essays every 1-2 months. If you would like to...

Jan 14
12 min

Nowhere But Here

There is no ideal life. There is only the life that you have chosen freely. Sometimes, a line arrives fully formed in my life, like a...

Oct 14, 2022
7 min

What is a god?

Note: This post consists of a few excerpts from Ousia, a book that I am currently writing. These sections are not finished, but I felt...

Oct 3, 2022
3 min

How Many Ways to Pray (whether or not you believe in God)

Let us begin with a clarification: the existence of God is beside the point. The fact that we can question God's existence as external...

Sep 5, 2022
2 min

Art is useless...unless it makes you an artist

I have long believed that my work is useless. Useless unless its beauty crawls beneath your own sight, hatching new seeds of seeing....

Sep 4, 2022
8 min

The Weight of Material Things

Sun clutters the floor. Still, no words. My objects have not yet bent their bodies to the shape of this new space. Opened boxes, my...

Jul 23, 2022
17 min

Bodies & Lost Localities

The hand of summer has felled interior wanderings. The whoosh of cars and the buzz of lawnmowers sound thickly through a viscous heat....

Jul 17, 2022
3 min

The Ghost of the Female Body

(This is an excerpt from my memoir, The Sea Once Swallowed Me). The earth wakes stark with white light, the air tastes of iron. As I...

Jun 17, 2022
10 min

Time is a Hiding Place

Evening, the sun still un-setted. Light shatters through the outside trees, breaking through windows and landing on my typing hands....

Apr 22, 2022
1 min

A Forgotten Belonging

There is a profound alienation at the heart of the modern self: we move through seas of strangers, we feel trapped between the cramped...

Mar 22, 2022
18 min

In Praise of Shadows (On the Precipice of Light)

Note: This essay was originally written for my email subscribers. If you struggle (as I do) with reading very long essays on the...

Feb 4, 2022
4 min

The Weight of Selfhood

"Spacetime is the individuation of entities." —Schopenhauer Blinking into self-consciousness, you are birthed into a terrible weight. You...

Jan 27, 2022
4 min

Language, Being, and the Sea Beneath

A truth is found in fragments, scattered throughout all disciplines. Each thinker employs a distinct language, but the essence is the...

Dec 24, 2021
1 min

Excerpts from OUSIA: Performance Poems for New Worlding

Words mean nothing if they can’t be lifted off the page. Books must be deconstructed and disseminated into the material world. In a world...

Nov 25, 2021
4 min

Bake a Loaf of Bread, Craft a New Mythology

Note: This is an excerpt from my next book, Ousia: Performance Poems for New World-ing. There are symbols in the original book that...

Nov 15, 2021
5 min

Love Widens The Horizon of Possibility

Dear Readers, What’s distracting her? I’m not sure; my eyes are fixed on her child. He is maybe a year old, wearing only a diaper—with no...

Oct 25, 2021
6 min

The Iconic Nature of Love

Dear Readers, From cold air and brightly-colored trees to a perfect 70 something degrees and stunning sunsets: we are back in Arizona to...

Oct 24, 2021
4 min

Love De-objectifies

(This and the next three posts are from a three-part email series about the workings of love. I rarely post emails to my website, but if...

Dec 26, 2020
7 min

Netflix's "Cuties" Is The Film We Deserve

"My aesthetic perspective is to hold a mirror in front of the world so that we as adults are able to see what we have created." -Maïmouna...

Apr 2, 2020
5 min

Day 100

This morning when I opened the blinds, the sun was of a different quality. This is summer sun, I thought, or at least the sun of middle...

Mar 29, 2020
2 min

Day 99

Once upon a time, there was a garden. And a woman and a man walked in the cool of noon and were unafraid. Things changed. We began to...

Mar 28, 2020
2 min

Day 98

We are too big in our brains, too little in our bodies. This is what I tell myself, at least, when Georg takes Sophie on a hike so I can...

Mar 26, 2020
2 min

Day 97

Our mythology sinks deep. It is whispered through us since birth, the axioms of our doctrine. "Blessed are the wealthy," they whisper,...

Mar 25, 2020
2 min

Day 96

It is so much easier to write about the frustration than the joy. I have expressed dissatisfaction with staying home all day (my life for...

Mar 24, 2020
3 min

Day 95

It seems unreasonable to claim that any of us could be responsible for the actions of a stranger. But I am beginning to believe that...

Mar 22, 2020
2 min

Day 94

It appears that our neighbor has committed suicide. It appears that my love wasn't enough to save him. Or rather, it appears that I...

Mar 21, 2020
2 min

Day 93

I speak from hypocrisy, as we all must speak. Georg is listless and depressed at the end of each day working from home. Last night, he...

Mar 21, 2020
3 min

Day 92

Here are detailed instructions from an ancient letter, on how to turn copper into gold: Step 1: Take 9 chicken eggs Step 2: Place them in...

Mar 18, 2020
2 min

Day 91

The cool silence of a morning with the blinds pulled shut. Hearing the rain on the windows behind, while Sophie breastfeeds on the couch....

Mar 18, 2020
2 min

Day 90

Over the weekend we ate pandemic pizza, quarantine cookies. If it's alliteration, it feels justified. But today is Tuesday, the beginning...

Mar 16, 2020
1 min

Day 89

People in desperation will always welcome tragedy with a strange intermingling of relief. I can't quite explain it, but I think it has...

Mar 12, 2020
2 min

Day 88

Today a friend called me, then texted. I was away from my phone, chasing Sophie through the sun-lit grass while other moms chatted and...

Mar 11, 2020
2 min

Day 87

Morality is taking personal responsibility for the wrongness of all things. This seems impossible. This requires caring, and we think we...

Mar 11, 2020
2 min

Day 86

I had the strangest thought today while taking out the trash. It was in answer to a question which isn't so strange during this season....

Mar 10, 2020
1 min

Day 85

What I didn't mention is that we spent all weekend looking to buy a condo. Utah is expensive, especially near Salt Lake, which is where...

Mar 9, 2020
2 min

Day 84

As we age, we become reconciled to the earth. No. But that’s the idea anyway. Reconciliation. It’s why we breathe to begin with, you...

Mar 6, 2020
2 min

Day 83

The light came through the glass door this evening while I drank peppermint tea. Sophie tried begging for cartoons, but I insisted on...