When I was in college, going back home to Paris a friend sent me a letter from Illinois, where she’d gone to visit her grandparents. It was super symbolic because she knew how important living in Chicago had been for my sense of identity. Despite it essentially amounting to the blink of an eye. Don’t…
Category: Through the Seasons
October Q&A
In honor of Scary Season, behold a Q&A of the things we may or may not want to talk about. Our own fears and trepidations, to kick off the theme for the entire month of October: things that scare us because we know exactly what they are or because they have a tendency to linger…
Back to School – what’s in a name (especially when it’s yours)
… my mother’s boss decided to address me as Adelheid. It threw me off for a minute because my middle name was nowhere close to what she was calling me, phonetically or through any stretch of the imagination when it came to meaning. As it soon transpired there was a more sinister element to her bestowing such a Germanic name on my poor teenage self.
Impromptu Guidelines for Surviving Any Given Holiday (at any given point in time)
As the bells toll and the fireworks are popping off, some people might dread that which is to come in a few hours. Namely, the Relative Fight Fest.That occasion when everyone gathers together, tensions mount and you begin to understand within seconds why it is that you normally don’t hang out, unless a “family occasion”…
The People Watcher Revisits Some Principles on Mourning
It is that time leading up to All Saints and All Souls, which brings with it the customary cemetery visit to honor those passed before us. And like most people with enough freedom to do so (and with a desire to avoid crowds), we decide to go a few days in advance. Because while it…
Another Nero, Another Site – Green Café Nero Pałac Kultury i Nauki
That instantly recognizable tower was, of course, one of the first things I saw when in Warsaw, and among one of the first I visited. Mainly because when asked what I wanted to do and see in Warsaw, I wanted to opt for something light before getting into the deeper, heavier stuff. I’m not a…
Ode to a Lost Friendship Polish Style II
Click here for Part I The thing with broken kids and kids from broken homes, we always recognize each other. What we do with that information is one thing. But there really is an invisible bond, accessible via the subtlest of signals that brings us kids together. Perhaps Babette was broken, too, but that didn’t…
Ode to a Lost Friendship Polish Style I
He came to me fully grown as a seven-year-old boy about to turn eight, so that’s how I always saw him, as the boy who lived below us in my building and was a year and a month younger than me. There were three of us on our side of the building, so that there…
Summertime Sadness
Much as I liked the summer, I always preferred spring. Spring is my birthday and as a kid that meant strawberries as well as warm nights and flowers blooming. Plus the arrival of summer, which either meant going somewhere nice to swim by the sea or moving back to the US. I’d usually find out…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Drug Deal Goes Down in the Neighborhood
Behind the house where the German pickup artist lives with his teenage daughter, wife and dog is a small path that gives you access to several buildings, including mine. It is a path gladly taken in the summer, for it is easier to handle the wildlife than it is to tackle the elements, especially the…
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