On losing the spark, knowing too much, carrying too much, and a line from Van Gogh about the fire we can't always feel.

A reflection on grief, film critics, and finding meaning inside the fractured world of the new Supergirl movie.

A piece of music from an old film carries me back to a marriage that didn't last, and to making peace with the way every season turns.

A boy no older than eight sat down across from me while I was writing, and handed me a whole meditation on innocence, time, and how small an island really is.

I usually hire professional models, and I'll tell you why. But the pictures I hold onto came from a fourth session with someone who wasn't a pro at all.

For as long as I can remember, my mother and I have clashed. Then I sat beside her in her grief, and something in me finally set the old weapons down.

Thirty thousand feet over the Pacific, heading back to the island that holds my father, not ready, still turning it all over.

Our overnight ferry to Cebu left four hours late and half of what was promised never showed. On a trip that fell short of the brochure, and the marriage that made it worth it.

At 59, everything feels like beginning again. On new starts, and the one thing that's been mine since my father handed me a Canon FTb in 1979.

On a bus climbing toward Baguio, I couldn't shake a question: what if one ticket could carry you the whole way, no seams? A daydream about how travel could actually work.

Thirty-six years after my last concert, I went to see No Doubt at the Sphere, and the anxiety hit before I'd even said yes. On facing fear for the one you love.

piece of music stopped me at my desk, and a line from a 1986 movie I've carried since I was nineteen. On tinnitus, grief, and the breaks that actually matter.