Mitri the Scribe was once the highest-paid servant of Pharaoh Unas in the 24th century BC. He was the guy you went to if you wanted a temple built, or a letter written, or if you needed a funny idea for a personalized license plate. Now he sits in the middle of a room at the Cairo Museum, unmoving, unblinking…

…but very much alive.

Really, this is a story about a tour guide. I promise I’m going to get back to Mitri, our Lord and Savior whom I met in Egypt, but first I want one of my favorite scribes…

According to a study by Microsoft, humans now have an attention span of eight seconds. Eight seconds! Don’t ask me for details on the study, I only skimmed it. And please don’t click away to that study link, I only included it so you’d believe me.

Anyway, if you’ve made it to this second paragraph, congrats! You’re a rare breed. Though you’ll notice that I’ve increased my odds by appealing to writers in my title. Writers tend to be readers by nature and practice. Reading articles from start to finish is like our daily push-up routine. …

I’ve started a little tradition for myself. I never leave La Sagrada Familia Cathedral without sitting down in a pew and meditating, specifically on what it means to live a sacred life.

I’m not a religious person, but I think a sacred life means looking up and around at your surroundings, lifting your face to the light, connecting with the work of someone who had something profound to say, whether that be God’s own work or that of some charming old architect who died in 1926 with faith in his heart — a faith that takes both attention and intention…

Churches in Europe are on a whole other level, man. And yet I’m somehow drawn to them like I was to the Cinnabon shop back at the mall in Tucson. There’s something irresistible about an over-opulent assault on the senses mixed with guilt and bodily hostility.

I can’t believe I pulled that comparison off.

See, since pain is, in many senses, invisible, and one of the only methods we have to measure it or express it to one another is language, I thought maybe if I couched this cringe-worthy topic within the folds of a delectable dessert, it might take…

As a previously healthy and semi-vital Long-Haul Covid sufferer, I’m asking myself several key questions these days:

1. WTFishappening?!Whywon’tthisstop?!WhatdidIdotodeservethis?!Owowowowow!
2. By the time experts know more about the long-term effects of this, am I going to be an irreversible pile of mush? Or worse, a dead pile of mush? Seriously, what’s happening to me?
3. Wait. …Am I someone with chronic pain now?

I got sick with Covid back in March of 2020 and my symptoms were mostly neurological rather than respiratory, which is rare for Covid but definitely not unheard of. …

A few weeks after the presidential election was called back in my home country, the United States of Giving-Me-An-Ulcer, I went out to Barcelona’s Poblenou Cemetery looking for a famous statue. It’s called El Petó de la Mort in Catalan, El Beso de la Muerte in Spanish, and The Kiss of Death in English.

I’m somewhat of a cemetery connoisseur and a massive history buff, so this sort of excursion would normally fill me with deferential, if not downright giddy, warmth. Napoleon razed this cemetery to the ground in 1775, for France’s sake. And my country’s been run, for the…

Hardly any of the bus drivers at the tour companies I worked for in the early 2010’s lived on the San Francisco side of the Bay. Most of them were Black, Latinx-American, or Chinese-American and they drove in from Oakland or as far away as Vallejo… They’d leave the house before the sun came up to beat the bridge traffic. If they made it to the bus yards in the Dogpatch with any time to spare, they’d catch some Z’s in their car. …

This pandemic is shaking us to our foundations. It’s literally forcing us to reconsider both time and space.

• We’re struggling to block out our time like we used to. We’re unsure if we’re spending it correctly. We can’t decide if it’s moving too fast or too slow. Wasn’t it just March? We’ve been inside forever.
• The space between us is wider and yet we’re in constant contact with each other over Zoom, social media, etc. We’re trying to be there for each other, to stick together, but not physically.

If you’re feeling rattled right now, it makes total sense. These…