Photographs, musings, and odd details about feelings carefully examined and gently held.
Based in Brooklyn. Before that, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Southern California. I graduated from UC Berkeley and work at Figma NY, where I build tools for designers.
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Essays
Post-Mortems on Love, 1/xSeptember 8, 2023
The first time I fell in love, I was lying facedown on a queen-sized mattress in San Francisco, in the early tells of an anxiety attack (though I hadn’t learned to call them that, yet). As my breathing sped up, I remember a weight on my back–the full weight of a body against mine–and a slow voice. Something about about how applying pressure to a certain spinal nerve soothes stress. I have no idea if that’s true. But I do know that I’ve never forgotten the feeling that followed: something like coming home to the lights on, warm wind on an autumn night, and a touch on the wrist. That feeling has stuck with me until today, and I’ve never stopped wanting to share that feeling forward.
That’s how I learned that love stays with you, years after the story ends and longing gives way to tenderness. Some things stick with you, like static to the skin. All it takes is a touch.
On Nostalgia, 1/x
July 7, 2021
Dappled slants of light, stale cans of apple cider, and tomato egg soup. The sound of the 51B, Bon Iver’s Blood Bank, and the warm summer breeze. Peonies wrapped in twine, patchwork postcards, and nights drowned in wine. It’s funny how the most visceral, lucid memories are imbued into trivial things, and all it takes is a glance, a taste, or a moment to send me spiraling down and out. But the really funny thing is that I seek these things out, I ruminate on them, and I invite them to take me for a ride.
For most of undergrad, it was so difficult for me to feel things in first-person. If you had to measure emotion on a scale, with 1 being lacerating, severing pain, and 10 being earth-shattering ecstasy.. you’d find me suspended between 4 and 6, leaning towards 4. I’d describe the experience as living in third-person: watching yourself laugh at jokes that aren’t quite funny, crying over things that aren’t quite sad, and observing your body act out the motions without any of the emotion. It’s general anesthesia, it’s melancholy, then it’s malaise–although my therapist says it’s depression. It’s the same subtle heartache you get when you watch Lost in Translation, Her, or In the Mood for Love. And it ferments a desire to place your heart under the scalpel, to feel something visceral, and to live un-sedated.
I think that’s why I’m so fixated on the past, why I cling so hard, and why I’m hung up on old stories. Because when I do, I find myself caught in a tight feeling in my chest. It’s this vise grip that seems to grasp a heart that has always been in motion and wrestle it into stillness. And so I think about the apologies I should have made, moments I let pass, & people I let go, close my eyes, and feel the shivers run down my spine.
From Berkeley, With Love
March 17, 2020
And as it all comes to an end, I can’t stop thinking about the small moments. The tangential moments that have no place beyond this context that comprise the ethos of this chapter. They are the small, but massive things. The little gestalts of this very special time.
They are the slivers of light that slip into my room at noon. They are the sudden, permeating silences that settle when Kroeber Fountain shuts off at 4:07 PM. They are the voices that float into my apartment from College Ave. They are enormous, marbled clouds that only seem to arrive when the light is warm, but the air is cold.
They are moments shared in 706 Norton. They are the changing colors of the leaves in Haas. They are little (big?) squirrels that scamper up the eucalyptus trees. They are the friends of convenience found between classes and clubs. They are you, me, and everything in-between.
It's these tangents of time and place that have no home beyond this context that strike me, and underscore the tremendous loss of these extraordinarily ordinary moments. And it's in these tangents that I leave my heart.
I'll miss these things, but for now, I'm left with sated gratitude for the bittersweet; for those who stuck around, those who didn't, and those that couldn't; and for all of these moments that have made my time at Berkeley feel whole.
Those Nights
April 1, 2018
There’s something about driving down that long, dark road at night, with my windows rolled down and the wisps of wind racing down my arm, that reminds of those warm summer nights–the same nights we spent playing pool in that korean billiards room, skating in the lot of that old supermarket, and chasing frogs in the creek.
Those were simpler times; those were nights that followed days where our greatest concerns were choosing places to eat, and finding ways to fill our hours with each other. Those nights had fuller hearts than those days; those days were the shadows of nights.
Thinking about those nights arrests my heart with the nostalgia of friends, places, and decisions that have no home now. These are friends spread across thousands of miles, places that don’t have the same charm, and decisions made by hearts no longer so foolish.
That summer was the last time I fell asleep with a heart moving in slow motion. And now, I guess those nights are neither here nor there. They belong with the bandaid wrappers and charcoal ashes left behind by slippery wheels and summer bonfires along the coast.
On the Sill
December 28, 2021
The window sits flush on 2021. This year is characterized by drastic shifts in feeling, with certain je ne sais quoi, that elude verbalization. I can't describe them, but the usual suspects–nostalgia and saudade–form their contours and give them shape. But when grasped all at once, their backstories are incongruent, eclectic, and altogether incoherent.
I moved from SF to BK, tried out new relationships, and finally learned to grieve 1:47:10. En route, I stopped in ANC, SEA, PDX (3x–no, 2x+PDM?), NYC, and PSP. Some moments are particularly memorable: (1) being held by Max, Daniel, and Gloria when I collapsed in 864; (2) copious mezcal negroni on Piccino’s roof on a brisk September night; and (3) a soulful, but bad rendition of Feist’s “1234” on the upper slope of Mt. Tabor. Runner-ups include: a blood pact with Bryan’s mom, WFH Wednesdays from Alyssa’s, and a manic, unplanned, 72-hour tryst in NYC.
I learned that: (1) Sometimes the true shape of our grief only unravels at a distance, enough so that the cavity of our loss becomes clear. It's taken years to grasp what's been surrendered, and that only grows. (2) Love has little to do with big reasons and a lot to do with (a lot of) small ones. It used to bother me that I couldn’t explain my love, because wordlessness betrays authenticity. But my hard-won lesson is that love is an inscrutable gestalt, an assembly of unspoken understandings and things done, not said. (3) The heart sings when you're surrounded by people whose heartst are for each other. I live in constant awe of the unearned kindness and loyalty of those around me. You know who you are. (4) A healthy love feels the true weight of things, plays at our tempo, and shows us our true shape–that which is entirely lovable and fearfully made.
A lot has happened.. and I wonder if you would recognize me today. Some things would be familiar, I think–I still overuse em dashes, get hung up on old stories, and look for you in empty rooms. But as always, there’s one feeling that’s not quite wordless: gratitude, in equal measure, for those who stuck around, those who didn’t, and those who couldn’t.
Keep the faith and stay the course. The best is yet to come.
August
August 26, 2021
I used to hate August. Growing up, June was my favorite. It was the beginning of something new, something endless. But August symbolized the end: no more catching frogs in the creek, sneaking into the high school pool at midnight, or pursing watermelon-kissed lips. August was saying goodbye, and damn, over the years, I’ve said a lot of them (and often actually in August, with a September here and there).
But now, August is so dear to me. And so are goodbyes. I’ve carried the goodbyes that I’ve given and received in my pocket for years and years. Because in the end, the bitterness always gives way to sweetness (with an appropriate pang of longing). The feeling is something special, something good. It’s a secret shared between two.
The Weight of Time
March 14, 2021
Some moments carry weight disproportionate to their brevity. Some seconds weigh years and some years weigh seconds. There are particular years that are more than the sum of their parts, that bleed into the future, that nothing can stanch. These are moments that are mournfully beautiful; those that lightly brush the heart, like little whispers of wind, and then tug all at once, lurching it into motion.
Today, I’m thinking about Joan Didion’s musings in The Year of Magical Thinking: “Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” I think this captures the idea that any given second passes like any other second, not lagged nor accelerated by all the context that culminates in that particular confluence of place, people, and time. Something like that mournfully warm afternoon in that sun-dappled bedroom where my grandfather passed. That moment passed so effortlessly, between breaths even; after all, one second is one second and one moment is one moment. But the gravity and weight of that exact instant-that-is-just-an-instant persists, and sometimes beyond its welcome.
Over two years ago, when my grandfather passed, I remember this irreconcilable dissonance between the weight of the atmosphere in that room and the passage of time. I remember my aunt sobbing. I remember my dad praying. But I distinctly remember watching the second hand of the clock surge forward in perfect tempo, despite the collective will of a family urging it to halt. I remember glancing away from my grandfather’s face for five seconds to watch the clock move. I blinked–and looked back to realize that he was gone. But when? In the five seconds I had looked away to glance at the clock? While I had blinked? I couldn’t precisely pinpoint the instant he passed. I still can’t really. The culmination of 91 years passed like any other instant-that-is-just-an-instant, but is so heavy that it has persisted an infinite quantity of instances. Some seconds weigh years.
And that’s how I feel about so many moments, these little gestalts, that are infinitesimally brief but incalculably heavy. And when the ordinary instant comes for me, I hope that we’ll be left with sated gratitude for all of the moments that, in sum, have made our time feel whole, but heavy beyond due.