Human beings go to great lengths to exit mental discomfort — On April 23, 1842, a certain Mr. S., gentleman farmer aged 50, visited the local medical man with complaints of a “great mental anxiety” for a few weeks because of an increased burden of business duties. Although the record is not specific, the breaking point came when Mr. S. witnessed…

There’s life before… and now. And they are very different indeed. — I arrived at Johns Hopkins at 8:10 for an 8:30 appointment. I finally looked up at the familiar glass entrance, after walking in a confused circle for more than a block, despite having been at this very place more than once before. I was distracted enough that I forgot to…

Why this is the one spring cleaning task you should take on this year — I got a new phone for my birthday, and, although phones now set themselves up through the mysterious sorcery of The Cloud, it felt like the right moment to clear out my contacts. My contact list has transferred over from phone to phone since I was in college. Somehow, some…

Replacing talking with typing has made us anxious — We believe we are people of letters. Like our 18th century ancestors, we fire off missives and conduct epistolary relationships. We text, we tweet, we Facebook, we email, we Slack, we DM, we Bumble message, we Discord, we — well, one of us — Truth Socials. We are wasting our…

An ode to my very first bucket of bolts — In 1992, my dad went down to the garage where my grandfather was the shop manager and bought me a used vehicle that would eventually be known as “Loretta.” The photo above is not my truck, of course. Mine was black, not navy, and my tires were chunky off-roaders, not…

The way to feel better is to not — Eat a whole Sara Lee cheesecake in a single sitting. Get fired. Get hired. Put too much pressure on yourself. Or not enough. Be diagnosed with a terrible lung disease. Drink excessively to mask a mortal fear, then go out the next night and drink even more. Long for something…

In the cyclones of sensation — A powerful nor’easter blew through me this month. Gathering strength for well over two weeks, this complex system rendered travel impossible, resulting in four separate days of canceled plans and a long stretch of sensorily perilous conditions. Last night, after a couple hours of torrential tears, the storm finally broke…

Two poems about fat and some thoughts about my face — For years, our family has passed around this little green tube of creamy yellow paste in the wintertime. It’s bigger than a chapstick, but still small enough to fit in a pocket. It has a mild vanilla smell and it starts out hard, but it softens and spreads the second…