Tag: ghostwriter
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how to find your voice

The other day I saw an Instagram post from a fashion icon and poet, where someone asked them, “How do you find your style?” They answered, “Heal.” Wow. What an answer. And how true. You can only know what clothing expresses your inner self when you know and accept that inner self. You can only…
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water and shared water

One night eleven years ago, my best friend came over for dinner. We were chatting along as usual when I began chopping a sweet potato, and she interrupted herself to say, “What are you doing?” I stopped. “What do you mean?” “The pieces are so uneven,” she said (not critically—just neutrally, surprised, curious).“You’re just, like,…
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and that makes you hard to see

After college, I worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Rochester, New York. My friends and I spent a lot of time at dive bars, namely one where we could spin a wheel to win cheap beer and hog the jukebox all night with our laundry quarters. We talked about anything and everything, and one night,…
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advice from a stranger

In February 2020, I took a road trip around the U.S. I met my friend Sam in New Mexico, and we decided to hike the Atalaya Mountain Trail. Around 8,000 feet we passed another hiker, a guy in his sixties decked out in hiking gear, standing in the middle of the trail. He waved his…
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a night at the tiki

“What do you do?” a random drunk guy yelled over the crowd. The guitarist in the corner was on his third “Wagon Wheel” of the night, so you know the tiki bar was hopping. A little tipsy myself, I yelled back, “I’m a writer!” A moment of alarm. Did that sound dumb? Would he laugh?…
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a bridge, a mask

Last week I sat down to write an essay about the year I spent leading creativity workshops in a women’s prison. It felt like an obvious topic, one that would hook people’s interest and inevitably lead somewhere interesting. But it didn’t. Every paragraph was a dead end. Finally I walked away. Later that night, though,…
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if you understand calculus

When I was living in Brooklyn (a lifetime ago now), one of my roommates taught math at City College. He taught he same class every year: freshman-level calc. “Don’t you get bored teaching the same course?” I asked him once. “Wouldn’t you rather have some variety?” “No, I like this course,” he said. “Why?” I…
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music of waves

When I got to Punta Negra – a tiny, quiet beach town about 30 miles south of Lima – the first thing I noticed was the slow, bassy build of the waves. They were the biggest I’d ever seen, the loudest and slowest I’d ever heard. They crashed one by one, a slow motion metronome,…
