I look a lot for meaning in life. And when I think about meaning, and what gives birth to meaning, it really comes down to how we string together words. A singular word can have one meaning, but until it’s looked at in concert with the words around it, it won’t yield anything deeper. But sometimes, I look so hard for meaning that by the time I get to the bottom of my analysis, I realize that I’ve come full circle. Because what does it mean for something to matter, when we are the ones …
Personal
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I remember having a dream. In it, I was in the backseat of a car with some of my friends, driving through a forest late at night, coming back from an event. As we’re cruising down the road, I glance out the window (of the passenger side of the car, no less. I even remember that). All of a sudden, I see a barrage of meteors in the sky. And for a brief and infinite moment, I flew into the night. The universe poured and gravity pulled and I was soaked to my soul with the magnificence of …
So you listened, learned, reflected, donated, marched, spoke up – what now?
This is the allegory of the cave, redux. Part 1 I wrote over a year ago, a piece rooted both in theory and reality. I have since come to hold Plato and his philosophies central to my worldview and the way I live—not only what he posited in the Allegory of the Cave, but also in The Republic. I want to revisit the allegory of the cave now, and apply it as a metaphor to where society is at this very moment—especially in the wake of dissipating energy and vigor around the movement for Black …
The allegory of the cave: A modern retelling, or 36 hours of revelations
0 | I came into consciousness in the cave. How I got there and how I proceeded, I cannot say. But I was there, and I was acutely aware that: 1 | I was in pitch black, surrounded by swarming bats, walking in guano, one hand out holding my phone as a torch to show the way, following the individual in front of me. And: 2 | I was mad tripping balls in the fucking darkness of the underground. That this was brand new and I was experiencing something entirely out of the realm of what I thought …
“Honey cakes and cerberus”
Over the last four weeks I participated in a Delve Literary Arts seminar on female friendships led by the wonderful, erudite, and insightful Hannah Kim (all of which is to say: I joined a fancy book club). We explored three texts: Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett; Sula, Toni Morrison; and The Door, Magda Szabo. In the course of a month, we discussed: Female friendship, as written by women writers, through both a fiction and nonfiction lens. These friendships are complex and nuanced, …