A hideaway in the mists of cyberspace

In the spring of 2001, I decided to start my own website. Actually, I decided to quit my job at the Austin paper, travel to Ecuador to learn Spanish, and also start my own website, where I planned to share stories of my adventures. I didn’t like the idea of spamming my friend circle with […]

Change

I started getting low around the holidays in my 20s, probably. Something about feeling spat out from the optimism of childhood. It’s almost charming to me now, how early I started feeling old. I liked holidays parties, of course, with their cranberry-colored cocktails, one endless glass of red wine, a little dose of amnesia to […]

The slow and uncertain process of filling it in

The road back from a road trip can be a drag. I’d taken three luxurious days to drive out to West Texas, drawing a crooked line to the left corner of the state, but I was returning to Dallas in one long afternoon, a mostly straight line along the bright blue vein of an interstate. […]

You were right about the stars. Each one is a setting sun.*

Last July, Texas Highways magazine asked if I had anything to write about, well, Texas highways. Oooh, I did. At least, I had an idea for a trip I’d like to take — out west, where the stars burn so brightly in the sky they look like pinholes punched in black velvet. (A line I […]

Saturday in New York City

Last Saturday morning, I woke before dawn in the cozy loft bedroom of my friends’ Tribeca apartment. For mysterious reasons, I’ve been waking up early for the past two months, sometimes as early as 3:30am. I badly wish I could sleep longer, but I’ve also grown fond of these dim and hushed hours before the […]

The age of fertility

I wrote a story for Harper’s Bazaar about the push to educate younger women about their fertility. If that sounds dull, it shouldn’t. Fertility is a thorny topic that touches on hot-button issues about women and their bodies. The push to make women more aware of their fertility is also tied up with a push […]

Max, who lived upstairs

In my last year of college, I lived on the lower level of a condo on a side street so quiet it was almost spooky. My two roommates and I spent a lot of our time on the front patio chain-smoking and drinking beer and wine at a bistro table placed there for that purpose. […]

Pictures of people with their eyes closed

I bought a framed portrait of a woman at a vintage store several years ago. I had been walking through an aisle crowded with peeling cabinets and rusty kitchen utensils when the portrait grabbed me. The woman’s eyes were closed, but she was smiling, and I wondered what the story was behind this disjunction, between the deliberate […]

Indelible in the hippocampus

I did not expect to write a story about the contentious nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  Some of my best friends are lawyers (did that sound weird?), but this is not my territory, riveting as the drama may be. But on Thursday, I watched the hearing, sitting on my parents’ couch from […]

The gala, alone

I was trying to get a picture of the red neon pegasus outside the Omni Hotel. I was standing on the sidewalk, in my high heels and the dress I’d worn to the gala, angling my phone to capture the Reunion Tower in the background, whose lights were flickering in such a way that if […]