Essays on memory, identity, and the unspoken parts of being human.
I crafted the perfect caption for twenty minutes. Three people liked it. Two were relatives. One was a bot. The revelation arrives slowly, then suddenly: the vast audience I’ve been performing for exists mostly in my imagination. All that careful content curation. Strategic posting times. Anxiety about others’ opinions. Directed toward people who scroll past
Five hundred and thirty-seven people saw my breakfast this morning. Avocado toast, perfectly plated. Golden morning light through the window. Caption about grateful mornings and fresh starts. Twenty-three likes within the first hour. What they didn’t see: I’d been awake since 3 AM, crying in the bathroom so my wife wouldn’t hear. The toast sat
The Price of Free I read the terms and conditions today. Actually read them. All forty-seven pages. It took three hours. By page twelve, I understood: I’m not the customer. I’m the product being sold. My wife found me staring at my phone with an expression she couldn’t quite identify. “What’s wrong?” “Did you know
I spent twenty minutes crafting a caption for my coffee photo this morning. “Brewing thoughts, one cup at a time. Perfect. Clever. Thirty-seven likes within an hour. Then my colleague asked what I was thinking about, and I said, “Nothing much.” The wit I perform online evaporates in actual conversation. My wife noticed this months
I have the ability to speak to the entire world. Right now. From this phone in my hand. I could write something, press send, and potentially reach millions of people. Billions, theoretically. Yesterday, I used this power to post a picture of my sandwich. “Turkey on rye. Living my best life. Eleven likes. My father
I refreshed the feed again. Nothing new. Same posts, same faces, same endless scroll. But I couldn’t stop checking. What if I missed something? My wife looked over. “Still scrolling?” “Just checking.” “For what?” I didn’t have an answer. What was I checking for? News I needed to know? Updates that mattered? Something that would
Scrolling through high school reunion photos, everyone commented “best years of our lives!” Then I opened my old diary and discovered how brutally my memory had edited the truth.
timeless entities temporal world paradox causation eternal gods mathematical truth physics philosophy religion existence reality
Happy’s been waiting fifteen years. Not with ultimatums. She just waits. While I figure out that nodding at your phone isn’t the same as listening. I don’t think that’s what she meant to do. Arash is eleven. Nine of those years he’s been saying “Baba, look at this.” Last month I looked. A beetle.
The claim that conscious beings represent “the universe understanding itself” requires rigorous analysis. Through consciousness, the universe gains capacities for self-reference that transform its ontological status through genuine reflexive knowledge.
I destroy things when they get comfortable. Intense, then distant. With her. With work. With Arash. That cycle. But maybe staying with things, even when boring, is what matters most.
How do you explain homesickness for a place that doesn’t exist? “Like I’m missing somewhere. But I don’t know where.” She sat beside me. “The nowhere feeling?” “You know it?” “Everyone knows it. We just don’t talk about it.”
“These words found the feelings I couldn’t name.”
“Like finding letters I wrote to myself but never sent.”
“Writing that makes you stop and remember what it means to be alive.”
Curated insights, thoughtfully delivered. No clutter.
