This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date.

From late 2010 through early 2012, I lived in Taiwan and taught English in the Hsiaogang district of Kaohsiung. One particular day a few months into my job there, a little girl was introduced to my class, knowing no English and having no English name. In English class in some places, it is customary for a student to go by an English name, just as I went by Pedro in Spanish class throughout high school despite being named David in real life (this choice of name having to do with a comic in the back of Boy’s Life magazine in the ’80s). In any case, I was asked to give her an appropriate English name.

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date. Early one morning in Korea, deep in a strange winter, wandering after…

Lura Emily “Pat” Smith June 17, 1920—May 14, 2015 Today, my mother’s mother passed.I found out this morning, but in the night I woke up suddenly and felt that something…

This post originally appeared on a previous incarnation of a personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date. 

Yesterday morning I woke at about 8:00 AM to the sound of a hundred children cheering in unison, singing a chant I did not understand but found wonderful to hear. The closest thing I can relate it to is being woken by a cat that loves you and nuzzles your face when it can’t stand your being asleep any longer.

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date. Long ago I pried open the shuttersAnd simply let the hinges rustAllowed…

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date. 

On the morning of March thirty-first, I and five bags containing the bulk of my relevant possessions boarded Delta flight DL296 from Shanghai to Tokyo. This was long overdue, as anyone who has known me for any amount of time would tell you, and in ways a very fulfilling experience. However, it came at an extremely difficult time and was not the wholly positive experience I had always hoped it would be. It was, for example, a transition that signaled the failure of a five-year relationship, despite my best efforts. Also evident was the realization of what not having had the confidence to pursue what was truly important to me had cost me.

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date.

This is a poem written for a woman who I fell in love with at the worst possible time, but who made me remember who I was after nearly a decade in toxic relationships that slowly poisoned me and made me a stranger to myself. She’s long gone now, but she’ll always be someone I remember in a special way. She gave me a wonderful gift. She gave me back my Self. 

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date.  Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point…

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date.  Noise gets a bad rap. I suspect most people hear the word noise and…

This post originally appeared on a previous personal blog. I’m republishing it here with the original post date.  Subjective reality is a sort of mirror. The world as we see…