I have moved many times in my life. The process appeals to my systematic mind: Acquiring boxes and tape. Plotting out what to pack when. Mentally determining how to arrange the boxes in the van. The process appeals to my mind, the execution is what I could do without. Three more moves, that is the goal: From my new place to the interim place. From the interim place into storage. And, finally, from storage to the last place I will live. That is the goal, at least. When my ti

I had car keys for the first time in my life. I kept taking them out of my pocket, jingling them in my hand, running my fingers over the metal. The ignition key had six sharp points. I knew it by touch already. I wasn’t trapped at my grandmother's, wasn’t marooned as I had been in high school. The house I grew up in was three miles from the nearest bus stop. You needed a car to get to a job and a job to get a car. For four years I’d been stuck inside that loop. Not anymore. I

This is an outtake from my memoir The Bad Kids. I couldn’t find a good place for it in the book and wasn’t completely happy with the ending. It was a disappointment; I really wanted this chapter to be included, I just couldn’t make it work. Hope you enjoy it. IDD. TEXAS By the time I got to Holly Heights, my shirt was sticking to my back. How was it so hot in April? Even the birds seemed to be hiding from the heat. A car came up behind me as I trudged up the street; it was No

"Time, memory, and the long consequences of living." I do not speak with an English accent because I am pretentious or a pretentious Anglophile. I speak this way because I smoked too much weed when I was a kid. Let me explain. In my memoir The Bad Kids , I tell stories about the misadventures of my friends and me—misadventures fueled by copious amounts of marijuana. By the time I graduated eighth grade, I had stopped smoking. Before starting high school, I reinvented myself a

Dear Monica, I write. This is my calling. If a good story insinuates its way in my head I feel obligated to follow it wherever it leads. My father had a stroke a year ago. Thankfully, he had a nearly full recovery but it got me thinking about the past, about things I’d mostly forgotten, people and events I’d blocked out because the memories were impossible to face. Not because they are awful memories, but because they were beautiful and beauty is fleeting. We touch beauty whe

Time, Memory, and the Long Consequences of Living…. I’ve had people explain to me how allowing Jesus Christ into their lives opened the world up for them. Other friends have attempted to elucidate how becoming parents caused them to look at the world in a completely different way. I have had neither experience, but still I understood. I’ve explained how the art stuff I do makes me aware of a connection to something much larger than myself— This is not about that; that is a c

My father had a stroke in early 2025. Luckily, he made a nearly complete recovery but the event caused me to think about the past and our relationship over the years. Memories returned of my childhood, the person I had been and the things I had done. These recollections reminded me of a few rough chapters I had written two years earlier about a boy and the misdeeds he committed with three friends. I had typed those chapters and forgotten about them—until Dad had his stroke. L