Month: September 2018

SoLA

Posted on by Sarah

On the corner of 6th Avenue and Washington Boulevard lies AM Vacuum. Well, at least that’s its abbreviated name in the yellow pages.

The storefront reads ‘AM Vacuum & Home Sewing Machine Sales * Service * Parts * New & Used.’ AM Vacuum has a brownish-red brick exterior that it shares with 6th Ave Liquor, or ‘6th Ave Liquor: Coldest Beer In Town.’ The owner of each has a clear knack for specificity.

Although I’ve just arrived at the corner of 6th and Washington, for a brief moment, I forget where I am. The bricks and boxy shape of the corner stores make me feel as though I am in New York, somewhere in the Bronx, in front of a bodega where I can by a bacon, egg, and cheese. But this building is low to the ground—there are no floors of cramped apartments above it. And the palm trees, which are spread nowhere on this strip of Washington Boulevard but can be seen off in the distance towards the downtown skyline, remind me that I am not in New York where I spent my college years.  I am here, at home, in Los Angeles. And I am standing at a corner, in front of a vacuum cleaner-slash-liquor store, lugging my mom’s Black & Decker Airswivel down the street.   Continue reading “SoLA” →

The Return

Posted on by Sarah
It’s been a year and a half (!) since I’ve been in this space, and about that long since I’ve written anything (!) that wasn’t an academic paper or book review.

The past 18 months have been hard. I could actively feel myself transitioning from one stage of life into another, and the shift was a destabilizing one. I felt unrooted, deeply uncertain, and—to be completely vulnerable—very lost. I wasn’t confident in my purpose and, for the first time in my adult life, I couldn’t answer the question: “Who are you, and, more pointedly, who do you aim to be?” 

Continue reading “The Return” →