Kowloon Walled City - 09/11/26
As a young girl, my vision of adult life stood behind plexiglass: a towering dollhouse in the children’s section of a big-box department store. It had no dolls in it. But I imagined miniature people greeting company in the furnished living room, hot coffee steaming from proportionate yellow mugs. Now for me that cross section of life belongs to another structure, though just as fantastical, due to it being demolished in 1993: the Kowloon Walled City. A chaotic yet familiar compound of 40,000 packed together, born from the blueprint of an old military fort with no oversight. Dark corridors sprawled throughout, pipes exposed, with drug dens and gambling parlors scattered inside. Despite this, it held a beauty known only to its residents who still dream about its winding paths and personalities and dead ends over thirty years after its death. Its walls still breathe in their hearts just as the dollhouse lives in mine, not due to its perfection but how it showed me that closeness starts far before one says “Hello”; familiarity invokes both person and place, along with its memories.
Flames - 09/14/26
When you squint your eyes in the light, you can grasp little clear dots in your vision. White blood cells flow through vessels in your retina, part of what is known as an entoptic phenomenon. I wonder if this is what Plato had in mind when he spoke about the cave—spark a fire, watch its tongues lick at facets of ourselves until they’re burned to carbon. Learn that our eyes are not perfect mirrors but reservoirs of water reflecting what is born anew. In Plato’s time, the mantle above the Oracle of Delphi held two words: know thyself. So then, I will shift my eyes to see the floaters clearly. I will know that flame and shadow are nothing to fear. They merely reduce what is known in order to reveal the core structure underneath.
Night Climb - 09/15/26
in darkness, everything sounds like a thief come bounding up the rocky slope a few grades too steep for me to hike. wind and anxious pulse conspire against me as my trekking pole misses its mark and i fall scraping my legs. yet i began this climb so i dare not quit. pulling myself up knowing i look like a fool, i dare not quit. the summit is ahead of me a couple more paces though my muscles ache and my pole glances the top. i look out among the city lights hoping to find my purpose hearing only the night calls of toads and intermittent car horns sounding below me