Notes app rejects

10.16.2026



My goals to write more here instead have not exactly come to fruition yet, but swear, I've been really busy and doing a lot.



Today is my grandfather's birthday. He's been dead for almost a decade now, and yet it feels like he's still here, in so many ways. Like he's a phone call away. Sometimes when I talk to my grandmother on the phone I pretend he's listening in, slumped in the brown leather recliner, one ear clued into the conversation while the other is paying attention to the Jeopardy reruns playing in the background. Divulging in this fantasy becomes even simpler since Grammy still ends every phone call with "we love you."



It's easiest to remember him as alive, because the alternative reminds me of this thing that even at my big age I still, with stark defiance, refuse to wrap my head around. But it doesn't mean I don't force myself to think about it regardless.



It washes over me while washing the mug my cousin got me, or when staring at the tree stump on my front lawn where just months ago stood a magnificent, shockingly old pine tree. My landlord hired a service to cut it down because the branches were weak and growing into the telephone wires.



My grandfather - Papa - was one of my greatest teachers, despite being a plumber by trade his entire professional career, and, once retired, spent his days STILL WORKING as a mechanic. My memories of him are flooded with grease-and-oil-stained t-shirts and handkerchiefs sticking out of pockets and a firm line of sweat always perfectly perched above his glasses. What I mean to say is, he didn't exactly look like a scholar. But he was - a lifelong student and a quick, adaptable learner. If you asked him to do something, he'd figure it out and have it done.



Papa cared to an absurdly charming degree about U.S. history, and particularly, local history. I spent many a weekend packed into his red mustang convertible, driving around the county looking for the navy-blue-and-yellow colored New York State historical landmark signs. He'd pull over to every one we saw and ask me to read what it says out loud. He'd fill in the details that were missing from the signage while we walked around the site. To me, he knew everything about everything.

Now I sit here and wonder if this was Papa's way of creating immortality. His voice is still burned into my brain.



On the morning he died (I was 19) I leaned down to his bedside and kissed his cheek and said, "I love you so much, Papa." His last words to me were - "I know that." Of course he did. He knew everything. He knew, in that moment, it was exactly what I needed to hear.



We would not be so scared of death if we treated living more like Papa did. He lives in the soil, in my mind, and through the telephone wires. His heartbeat is my car engine. His laugh is my father's.



You really can live forever.







8.20.2026



having a lot of existential dread

meaning,

i'm having a hard time grappling with

death

as a permanency





it is undoubtedly a privilege

to want life so badly

that you now fear the end of it.

you never used to.





like the rideshare home after a concert

or the sinking feeling as the credits fade in





08. 13. 2026



when i first discovered the internet, probably about 20 years ago (for context: i just turned 28 last week), one of the very first kinds of spaces that sucked me in were forums. chatrooms. blogs. i was a child desperate for connection and discovering a world at my fingertips i couldn't possibly comprehend the vastness of.



i suppose there are some things that are buried deep into the core of your being and show up over and over again, one way or another. my desperation to understand a world i never fully can is still a gnawing, snarling monster at my big age. the biggest difference of my understanding of the world, though, is that i believe in its future less.



it's a sign of the times, i guess.



something about this space here felt like re-entering a corner of the internet that last existed when i still believed in the future. or it did, until i spent several hours building this page on the day i created my account only to find that the next day, i saved absolutely zero of the progress, and the page appeared as the corny little template that it began as. what a fucking metaphor.



it took me a week to get over that (objectively minor) inconvenience and now i'm back to try again. yay!



this is my first entry of what i hope to be many more in my never-ending quest to understand... maybe myself, maybe the internet, or some weird combination of both.



*~*~*~*



the performer perches

steadily, on the wings,



dips her toe

into the spilling

blue light.



the stage is familiar.



when the dance begins,

it's as if

she never misstepped.