Most situations, as someone once instructed me, depend more on the style of entry than escape.

a semidiasporic postcolonial indeterminate like me

haole

Val encounters life and persons as they come to her, this total acceptance of the fact that you’re here, that you belong to the space you’re taking up, that it’s all and only yours. A rare thing, IMHO. If you think about it, most persons, including many of those who say they love you, can’t help but question your particular coordinates in whatever

be greedy in your appreciations. Practice extravagant gratitude. Savor whatever your portion. This may sound like carpe diem but what I really mean is for the dies to carpere te, to have the moment, the person, the world, grab you right back in their full rankness and glory.

the main thing you learn about yourself and everyone else toiling away is how much of your mental activity and chatter is about dreaming of doing something else, whether noble or debauched or downright silly.

He tailored these pitches for sure but what I admired was that they weren’t in the least fake or overflogged. Pong offered them the angles they needed and wanted to make a free and confident decision that you could see became ultimately theirs and theirs alone. Pong, I realized, made himself their partner, not the other way around.

opium bed

Pong was generous because he had a bottomless wonder for our multitudinous human family, this perpetual appreciation of how people are. And maybe: can and will be.