Strangers are given, rarely made, but hold the potential to be remade into distant people— like what happened last summer, when I spent two months living in a house full of strangers. That June and July, there were nine of us living under the same roof. On certain humid evenings we'd gather over wine and... Continue Reading →
I have officially pulled my first all-nighter of the summer, starting in Singapore and ending, I hope, here in Qatar, where I've wiled away the night hours with Coke Zero and voices notes and emails. Soon I'll be boarding a flight to Brazil, which feels unbelievable still, save for the rapid-clip Portuguese in this waiting... Continue Reading →
Seeing Seoul in daylight for the first time in eight months, I looked out the window at 5 A.M. last Thursday to find that an entire village (마을) behind my family home had vanished. Where once I'd walked past old-fashioned front doors welded from metal, deep burgundy brick, and thin side alleys that inspired much... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago, at my first Quaker worship at a small, red-doored building here in Oxford, I sat with both feet on the ground, my palms facing the sky, as I listened to silence in the presence of a dozen others. There were no protocols to the prayer practice. You could rise to speak... Continue Reading →
It is September, a lovely in-between moment between seasons, and I am here for the first time in several months to say that I will be going away for a while. The summer, now quickly ending, has been full of warmth and fun with friends and family, but not without a growing, gnawing desire for... Continue Reading →
Or: Four Scenes from a Rhode Island Summer ● The neighborhood I live in can be a lonely place. Situated atop a hill full of students from two campuses, it is the kind of place that, for a recent college graduate, resembles a poor echo of what is missing. On grocery runs and late afternoon... Continue Reading →
This week is my fourth in the smallest state in the union, my summer home: a place where garish motorbikes decked in LED lights roar down suburban roads, and where, in the collegiate bubble of Fox Point, every other person looks like someone I could've known. (And sometimes, the possibilities seem so real that they... Continue Reading →
May has disappeared as if into a sinkhole. What a month it was: somehow, in the span of four weeks, I managed to graduate, pack up my life in New Jersey, travel through six states, and come down with a sudden (non-COVID) fever that left me bedridden for days. I'm happy to report that it... Continue Reading →
Outside the night is raining a fierce April rain, the first in days. What a time for all kinds of weather: yesterday's sun, hot and languid like a yellow fog; last week's sudden but not altogether unwelcome chill; today's humidity, the air latent with all the things yet to be said, to be done, as... Continue Reading →
O março foi um mês cheio de nada e de tudo à mesma vez. Foi o começo da primavera, a minha estação preferida: os flores e colores começavam voltar ao nosso campus, enchendo o ar com a doce sensação de um novo começo e uma esperança esperada. Nos últimos dias, tenho acordado bem cedinho na... Continue Reading →
Hey there, I'm Jimin. 