Teeth, Love, and Growing Up

    With  2023 coming to a close, I look back at the year and think of all the change and growth I experienced. Here is a recap of the most memorable events of my 2023. Part One: Boston      I spent my last semester of college in near-total apathy toward my education and soaked up as much of Boston as I could. Boston was the first place in my adult life that I could intimately call home. I was so fortunate to experience the full spectrum of human emotions in the pure, unfiltered way one does when surrounded by people they love, knowing their experiences will eventually come to an end.      In early February, I got my first concussion from playing hockey. It was minor, as far as concussions went. But I was out for the rest of the season, and I was devastated. After thirteen years of playing competitive hockey, I had no idea who I was once I couldn’t call myself a student athlete.      Fortunately, I found peace with BU’s athleti...

Someone threw up on the T today. I heard it before I saw it. First, the gag – cutting through the silence of the subway car filled with the buzz of insomnia and the dread of work shared among strangers. I peered up from my book, already feeling on edge for reading The Love Hypothesis in public (I needed a light story between all of the World War II novels, you know?). After a moment of silence passed, I glanced back down at my book. Perhaps she’s pregnant, I thought.  As I turned to flip the page, my fingers froze to the sound of a gutural “UH” hurled across the car. “UH…UH…” Oh god , I thought, and my eyes bolted up wide in alarm to see the person hunched over and dry heaving. As the subway car cruelly crawled from Hynes to Copley, I suddenly felt the urge to start gagging too. What if we all threw up? I thought. That must be some sort of psychological phenomenon.   Strangers standing nearby gingerly backed away, seconds before the person finally vomited across the car floor...

Today, while starting to pack for my cross-country move, I listened to three albums back-to-back: Samara Joy's Linger Awhile , Etta James's At Last! , and Billie Holiday's Solitude . I learned about Samara Joy when she won two Grammys last year, and of course the latter two albums are classics. (I'm listening to Solitude  again as I write this.) I typically don't have the patience to listen to albums all the way through, and I think that comes from the algorithm-driven anxiety to approach every sound we hear from a place of evaluation: Do I like this song? Enough to favorite it? Enough to add it to a playlist? Which playlist?  Obviously, that's not how music is meant to be consumed, but it's the way I have consumed it since I made my Spotify account in eighth grade. Checking off boxes and accumulating information, but never steeping myself deeply enough in the work as a whole to really understand the context I am interested in, like an artist's stylistic...

     Dear Kirkland Signature Mexican Style Blend Cheese,      I write to you as a long-time consumer and fan. From sprinkling you on plain white rice to squishing you into small, grubby balls and eating you straight, you were a significant contributor to my youthful dairy intake. Before I knew how to properly cook a meal, I watched you with anticipation in the microwave, watching each strand flatten into a gooey pool. I always ate it with my fingers. (I know, gross.)      Then one day I found a thick green and white mold growing within the bag I’d left alone for too long, and stopped eating Kirkland Signature Mexican Style Blend Cheese for a few years.      In any case, the other day I found that my Costco-card-holding roommate stocked our fridge with several bags of Kirkland Signature Mexican Style Blend Cheese – the kind that comes in big packs of two, connected by a little red plastic handle at the top. I remembered fondly t...

Good Morning EN502, I am currently on the commuter rail. It is 5:45AM and I have been awake for over an hour. I am very conflicted about my mornings. I hate getting out of bed. It is a painful extraction process from the warmth of blankets to the cold of New England mornings. I dread February.  I do love the taste of my Earl Gray Tea which I sip black for the duration of my commute. I find kinship with the man who waits for the bus with me everyday, our lives existing on parallel schedules. Today I noticed the same runner passes me each morning too, his headlamp bobbing with his strides. I like getting to the hospital early too (I did get the job I wrote about last time). It is always a happening place, even at 6:30 in the morning. I am impressed by the energy night nurses maintain until the day shift arrive.  Other things I love:  - the old early 20th century hospital architecture mashed with state of the art 21st century buildings. I like learning the history of Boston ...