Author Archive for Toothpick

the shower: prt III 2,348 Comments

I have yet to figure out how to successfully navigate the grey borders between nonchalant compliance and active accountability: a weakness that has somehow worked in my favor, much to the chagrin of those that I have disappointed specifically because of it. Note to self: Self-help books written by others do irreparable harm to the [...]

the shower: prt II 25 Comments

The kitchen is only a few paces away, yet seems like it’s comfortably lounging at an infinite horizon. She must have noticed; she asks if I need some water. “Please. And there’s some Excedrin in the cabinet too, if you don’t mind.” She dutifully complies, this Ruth person. She just arrived this morning, and she’s [...]

the shower: prt I 22 Comments

Waking up on a Sunday morning is always a sensory overload. Especially here: a damp basement where mold and dust marry each other, and erupt into an unsavory odor of their own microbial consummation. Debris ejaculate smells like mildew. The air becomes an expansive womb that carries little dust-mold fetuses, bellicose zygotes that take absurd [...]

Walls 87 Comments

“Just do your thing, man. It’s all yours,” he bellowed, dramatically gesticulating towards one empty white wall of his new condo’s dining room. It wasn’t furnished, yet. In fact, the place looked like it needed a lot of work. The wall-to-wall carpeting spanned the living and dining rooms, decorated with insolent stains and holes. The [...]

Of Symbols & Idiots 38 Comments

The word ‘ethnomusicology‘ carries with it certain connotations that may make one squirm: tokenizing, misappropriated cultural anthropology, exoticism, etc. However, after watching Itsushi Kawase’s three short documentaries on how music is interwoven into the fabric of those who live outside the fringes of conventional comfort, I am left refreshed that maybe, just maybe, there is [...]