A tour bus, a dangling cable, a literary landmark, and a question I’ve been trying to answer for years. Left: Janis Joplin performing, by Columbia Records - Billboard page 5, public domain, Right: The author of this story Here’s what I remember about the accident- I was a tour guide in San Francisco, telling stories to strangers on top of a double-decker bus. I was trained to stand for the whole tour at the front of the bus, facing my audience. On this fateful day, I'd been p

Together, we diverge. Photo by Spencer Cooper on Pixels Well, well, well. It turns out, us neurodivergent writers — who spent our whole lives being forced to adhere to a norm and mimic the masses — were secretly sleeper agents all along who’ve been activated by the emergence of disingenuous AI and the sudden demand for fallible authenticity. Our mission is clear — articulate sensation, process slowly, and be unapologetically human. Unapologetically human, to me, means not bei

Breaking and shattering with purpose. Photo by k 🦔🌿🌹🎶 on Unsplash The first time I soldered, I grabbed the soldering iron by the iron, not the handle. Yes, it was plugged in and turned on. Whatever version of autism I have — which has now been officially diagnosed, but may soon categorize itself into some other neurodivergence due to its apparent relatability — impacts my processing speed. This was noted by the psychiatrist in my recent assessment, and it echoes years of

What it's like to be an American immigrant, watching and worrying from abroad. Photo by Liubov Shramko on Pexels I have a dedicated phone booth in my living room. It's a 3D-printed miniature replica of a bright red British telephone box with a hole in the bottom for charging cables to push through. My boyfriend Richard printed it a few months ago to keep us honest about our daily phone usage. He's English, I'm American, and we live in Spain. I judge my mental health and the p

Being creative in the face of AI and impending joblessness. "Skirnir" by Minya Diéz-Dührkoop, 1924. Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive/MKG Collection Online. It's been a while, friends. Time flies when you're broke. The last thing I wrote here was an article about feeling stuck in a perpetual state of statue stillness while caring for my sick grandmother, living the same day over and over again in my parents' house, wondering how much of my early life story I

All we have is the past. Dementia. I wake it up, I cook its meals, I put on its bib, I zip its zippers, tug on its shoes, adjust its...

Inventing the Sci-Fi genre at age 18 required a radical upbringing. The parents of Marry Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley. Left- William...

A celebration of science and spirit. Interior of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Architect-Antoni Gaudí. Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Photo by Eleonora Albasi on Unsplash I’ve started a little tradition for myself. I never leave La Sagrada Familia Cathedral without sitting down in a pew and meditating, specifically on what it means to live a sacred life. I’m not a religious person, but I think a sacred life means looking up and around at your surroundings, lifting your face

OMG, they were tomb-mates Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, as depicted in their tomb in the necropolis at Saqqara, Egypt I’m going to rip the bandaid off real quick here by letting all my gaybies know that there is significant (as in “much”, not “important”) debate about the nature of the relationship between Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, two royal manicurists whose shared tomb was discovered at Saqqara, Egypt in 1964. But isn’t there always significant debate when it comes to hist

And why you feel like an a-hole for complaining about it now. Martyrdom of Saint Ciricus and his mother Juliitta represented in the Romanesque antependium (frontal altar), known as the Durro antependium, dated to the mid-12th century, originally from the Sant Quirc de Durro chapel in the Vall de Boí area in Alta Ribagorça in Catalonia, Spain, now on display in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, ​​Catalonia, Spain. Photo courtesy of the author… who will never u

And why it matters in the age of anti-abortion, nuclear threats, and civil rights As long as I’ve been alive, my family’s told the same...

Please allow me to update you on "My Incredible Success" I made $613.11 in my first consistent month as a paid contributor due to two...

The trickster archetype narrator and how to utilize it. “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also...

A travel writing exercise and fan cross-over Woman in the Garden This piece is going to be different from my usual historical pieces....

Processing 2020 in a cemetery so you don’t have to. A few weeks after the presidential election was called back in my home country, the...

The history behind America’s billion-dollar wage theft problem and how to fight it. Hardly any of the bus drivers at the tour companies I...

Why time flies when society comes undone. This pandemic is shaking us to our foundations. It’s literally forcing us to reconsider both...

What a princess, a knight, and an evil dragon can teach us about Covid-19. We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of...

The story of an Americana darling and his living shadow. I’m mad at Mark Twain right now. If you follow along with my writing (and you...

What’s more interesting than the history a public statue represents? How that statue got there in the first place. It occurs to me that I...