“Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.”—Jean-Paul Sartre I have spent days in a barren place. Red disappeared. Starless. Stormy. Uncertain. Still, until awakened by the wind of your breath. I live in a rainfallen place. The rain turns to hard hail as I step outside the sanctuary of home. The hail is unexpected and hardbreaking as each moment before me turns from a sad drop to an immense body of drowning uncharted waters. My cheeks, my hands, my heart pricked by the weight of rain turned cold, ugly, and gray. Still, I follow the habit of [...]

The earliest known scissors appeared in Mesopotamia about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. The first scissors trademark was granted in 1791. (And for those who love the word scissors: I believe it’s a plural noun used with a plural verb.) In an obscure corner of Jersey when my first tool—a pair of scissors—was placed in my hand, the cool, stainless steel bit my flesh and the sharp edges of the blades stood still in my palm as my grandmother warned me of danger. The weight of the scissors turned heavy and the glint of silver reflected my mirror image as [...]

(Catfish is a documentary about New York photographer Yaniv Schulman, who is filmed by his brother and friend as he falls in love with a woman via Facebook, who turns out to be a married Michigan woman taking care of her husband’s two sons who have disabilities.) The closing chorus ties up loose ends, expresses the last beat, the last word, the last sound. The story lingers in the air, silhouettes hang on the stage, the applause is heard. The completion is never quite what we expected. The rush through the finish line is pure exhaustion. Taping and shipping a [...]