HAZY HEAT

Happy almost-Friday, my friends. We're surviving another week of this terrible, terrible year. But as terrible as it's been, good things have come. I was lucky enough to stumble upon some new friends around the beginning of the year. My partner posted her  youtube channel  on our local  "What's Happening" page and received a message back from a girl named  Annie Hex . She was looking to link up the queer people in our area as a means of finding friendship outside the cis-white-straight default our area has to offer. Weeks went by and I was introduced to people right in my neighborhood who I'd never even known. Interesting, creative, kind people. I have a group of wonderful close friends in my life, whom I’ve known for the better part of my entire life. Through the years we’ve ended up moving a fair distance apart, 15 miles in a car to 15 hours on a plane, and I've always found making new friends difficult due to my anxiety. It's become increasingly dif...

Today marks seven months of working from home. My room is the only place in the house I can work, so it's where I have spent 10-12 hours of my day every day. Just here watching this shitshow of a year play out. I've been in my bed for what feels like weeks. I've also been watching the Amy Coney Barrett judiciary hearing for two days straight... chalking it up to a streak of masochism. My mind is turning to mush. So here are some photos from the two times my partner and I made it out to Chicago this summer to visit family. Some nice, unmelted memories. ☼

I spent most of my time in college working as a tutor. I was a music education major at the time and had been lucky enough to stumble into the gig by way of a genuinely kind football coach named Andy that frequented the bar where I waitressed. The athletic center had been searching desperately for someone to tutor Music 101, a class that students were placed in under the assumption that it would be a blow off class. Little did they know that Music 101 was taught by the most unforgiving of musical scholars - jazz program grad students. Only one semester passed before I was tutoring pretty much every subject they needed, other than math and chemistry. Those were a hard pass for me. My students  were all athletes, a lifestyle with which I was unfamiliar that made me love it all the more. I learned something from every single student I worked with. It remains my favorite job to this day. There were a few students I connected with more deeply, as any person in my position might have. O...

My brain feels like an ember. No flame presents itself, only a glowing burn that is too dangerous for me to touch. Flames are known for their brightness, their presence. They can light up miles of skyline and leave nothing but ruins. And while a flame can be snuffed out, it is the ember that must be destroyed to stop the burn. An ember the size of a fingernail can reignite a fire that can last for days. It will destroy everything in its path, making room for the new. It is hard for me to reach that fire. So often I sit and burn.  I have spent my summer taking pictures of sunflowers. We have a community garden in walking distance of our home and they were a staple in many of the plots. Their petals are my favorite shade of yellow but that is not the reason. They remind me of my father, his favorite. The flower I always choose to leave in his memory. That is not the reason either. Each time I am in the presence of a sunflower I am filled with awe. I do not believe in god but standing...

 My intention was to post these photos tomorrow to welcome in October, the spookiest and best time of the year. But then I began to think about the day I actually took them. It was a summer afternoon, maybe late June or mid-July, and for whatever reason I was on my own with no plans. I ventured out with my camera to see what I could find, a decidedly typical move for me in the wake of idleness. It was a gorgeous day. The sun shone and the grass glowed. The green in the trees was lit up by the clear blue sky. It did not at all resemble today, gray and windy and leaves changing, where one might expect to find themselves in cemetery from the 1800s. Yet that’s precisely where I ended up. Call me cliche, but I'll never turn down a walk in a cemetery no matter the weather. You can't take the emo out of the girl. These stones did not scare me as much as they saddened me. Some were marked with simple one-word titles. Many of them that included names also included dates, showcasing the ...