Writing Through the Fog

(Intended Title: Fleeting Love in the Time of Ambiguous Cinema, Part III) Audio for part I of this post. The first time I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, years ago, I didn’t like it. The film—about two people who go through a procedure to erase each other from their memories—was made well, and [...]

Circa 1997 “Do you want some of my water?” a girl with pigtails asks as she hands me her water bottle. A green glow stick floats vertically inside it. “Sure,” I say. She compliments me on my sneakers as I gulp. “Who did you come with?” she asks. The music builds. It gets louder. I [...]

A memory. It’s tricky, it’s slippery, it shapeshifts as the years pass. I remember a moment from my childhood and inadvertently change its shape: recollection pushes the original moment deeper down the well. And even if I have evidence of a memory—a photograph, a video—the sensations and nuances have been lost. My “favorite aunt” lived [...]

A mother and son sat across from me on the U-Bahn yesterday. She wore a long red coat, a small Nike backpack, a bulky Canon dSLR around her neck. He had a fluffy windbreaker on. And unlaced sneakers. They whispered to each other every now and then, the boy looking at passengers who came off [...]

I began to explore my neighborhood on my bike when I was four years old. I followed gravel paths and navigated around cracks in the sidewalks in methodical ways, developing a transit system with stoplights to regulate imaginary oncoming traffic. A boulder may have doubled as a stop sign, two painted lines near a curb [...]

One afternoon, five years ago, my mother and I sat in a red booth at Taxi’s Hamburgers, chomping on cheeseburgers. She was reminiscing about the 1970s, when she lived in San Francisco. “I know the Mission line, the Cortland line. I used to take the bus from the Mission to the Fillmore. I know the [...]

The last time I wandered the streets of Barcelona was in 2000, and I fell in love with the city. When my 20-year-old self compared Barcelona to Madrid—the other major city in Spain I visited that spring—Barcelona won me over with its Gaudi masterpieces and curvy Art Nouveau buildings. As for the capital of Spain? With [...]

My earliest childhood memory is of my fourth birthday: August 18, 1984. I recall my little self sitting Indian-style on the orange carpet in front of the three-paneled-mirror in my parents’ bedroom. I stared at my reflection: my pear-shaped face, my exposed toes, my straight, jet-black hair down my shoulders. I remember how I gazed [...]