Author Archives: rorytate

I feel like the algorithmic decrepitude of the discourse has had its way with Mother’s Day a million times over. In the early days, we had the first-gen-parents-on-social-media sincerity train. Then that quickly morphed into the “mother’s day is complicated” counter-narrative. And once that horse was beaten to death, we ended up where we’re at,Continue reading “Musings on Motherhood”

Summer 2020. I woke up in my love’s bed. There had been a cascade of bad things that happened. A pandemic, for one. Many of our social relations unraveled and our worlds forced very small. People were dying, according to official records because of the novel virus but effectively because of the death by aContinue reading “On Catastrophe and the Sublime”

Oh wow. Almost 2 year hiatus. And the thing that brought me back was a film about memory, mourning, humanity, relationships. So really, re-reading the last and inaugural post, it’s like I never left. After Yang is a film by the mononymous Kogonada. In a soothing, dreamy, A24-stylized near-future where, for all intents and purposesContinue reading “Past Perfect”

“I’m lucky” I make sure to demur, in every distanced conversation, and it is at once a talisman, an incantation, a manifestation, a ritual. “Lucky” – biking by a tent encampment in the Don; reading another heartfelt sign in the window of a now-permanently shuttered local business; scrolling past a video of tenants gathered inContinue reading “She’s So Lucky”