guitar
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in group the other day, we were doing this mindfulness practice — focusing on an object or scene, really letting yourself see it, the texture, the light, and edges. the quiet stuff your brain skips past most days. someone pointed out a single cloud moving past the window. we all looked. then a man, maybe…
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some places feel like they know how to hold loneliness — not fix it, just hold it. bliNK came from a walk I took through one of my go-to parks, late in the day, sky bruised with light. the park sits high on a hill, with quiet paths and a wide view of the New…
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right now, my guitar is just a few steps away, but it might as well be 10,000 miles. there’s a distance between us that’s hard to explain — a space that feels impossible to cross. depression (in my case, a co-occurring mental disorder) has a way of making everything feel slow, like the world keeps…
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if this year were a book, it would be the kind without periods—just commas—where life kept running, often out of my hands. it’s been a tricky year, one that reminds you the worst might not be behind you, only to surprise you again. and yet, here I am, a year older since I started posting…
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once, on a bus, I felt I’d lived another life, another time. it made me think: if I were somewhere else, lived in a different era, I’d still want to be a musician. to be alive, awake, and tuned into everything, even the things that hurt. I don’t want to die; I just sometimes wish…
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the first thing I noticed this morning was how mom’s potted plants on our windowsill opened to the sun. then it was the way the light was touching the sky. and then how the street sweepers broke the silence with their heavy metal song. sometimes nothing makes a noise. abuelita says that in a silence…
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today Brooklyn is a beautiful, devastating autumn. it’s a beauty that comes and goes. on the street where I live there’s an old church that glows with the sound of October’s bells. I bike past it every day on my way to the donut shop where I work. (is it called the Doppler effect when…
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our group leader uses this cool exercise to help us reflect on and address the fears in our lives. she calls it fear in a hat. in this exercise, each person anonymously writes down a fear on a piece of paper. you’re supposed to begin with the words, the worst thing that could happen would…
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riding home on the subway tonight, the stars appeared late, as if delayed — each with that familiar look. you know, the look, like they’d been caught in traffic, rushing to the sky, just in time for me to glance up from my book. and in that instant, I remembered every happiness I had ever…
cookie nieves 