As my darling father was dying, he experienced something called Anisocoria. It was after Nina’s explicit instructions that he let go, and he was in the midst of complying. His rattling lungs had stopped making any noise, and his breathing turned into shallow panting, like a tired puppy. As my…

Quarantine: a month or something. This painting is called “I Told You Guys I Could Paint an Owl.” I would like to thank the barn owl from Wikipedia who is my muse. This is my second “crisis painting” and I feel like it’s good to know I could be a…

We did little shopping runs, and it was a production. We pick up supplies (beer, cheese, beets, mustard, meat). Everything is limited to max- 2 per household to keep the hoarding to a relative minimum. Apparently you have to line up at 6 am outside of Target if you want…

In 1937, the British government started a project called Mass Observation that was meant to record the mundane life of citizens during World War II. By 1939 on the brink of war, hundreds of unpaid volunteers participated. …

Unloading dishes in my kitchen in Pasadena with the music on, and boom, I’m collapsing with grief because a song came on we sang a lot, as a family, the summer my dad died (Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart). I don’t mean to make us sound…

It is raining and my father’s body is somewhere else. For days, my mother and I didn’t know where he was. Men in suits wheeled him out on a stretcher in the middle of the night after he died. …

“Hello little brother. I’m calling to tell you happy late birthday and I love you. I hate calling people on their actual birthdays because everyone gets so inundated with calls, but it’s also an excuse to seem like I have my act together when I call the next day. I…

My anxiety has been through the roof. It is a privilege, I think, to live in the modern world with all of its luxuries and still have the same hotblooded feeling that you get when you are actively running from a wolf. Fight or flight instinct is built inside our…

The last thing my father ever ate was watermelon. I cut up a giant watermelon on Wednesday morning, and I think he had 4 or 5 pieces. From then on, that is all he wanted. The days felt so long, that when my sister tried to make him a bowl…