“The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” - Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Expression is paramount; it is difficult; it is a dealbreaker. In...

To a fifteen-year-old, the occasion of getting a car is marked with a strong sense of independence, joy, and fulfillment. For parents, that event is distinguished by the ascent of car insurance premiums to impossible levels, the realization that their baby is an adult, and worry, above all. Given those circumstances, my mother made the executive decision that I would, “under no circumstances” be driving any sort of vehicle until I could demonstrate a need to have such a thing,...

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” The epitaph on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s gravestone is an existential crisis and a half. At face value, one feels the struggle of fighting against the “currents” in our own lives; at second glance, a reader might stumble upon Fitzgerald’s nod to the irrevocable past, contrasted by the malleable future; an even deeper dive allows the reader to experience the agony felt by Fitzgerald’s characters...