Field Notes

The question of forgiveness is a tricky one, especially in today’s world. As I reflected on Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower and its exploration of forgiveness, I found myself drifting between the historical context of the Holocaust and the ways similar moral dilemmas echo into the present. The moments when harm feels so vast and personal […]

Somehow script writers haven’t figured out how to include the second generation of Earnshaws, Lintons, and Heathcliffs into the story that would expose Heathcliff as the abusive, vengeful old man he becomes after Catherine’s death. For example, I would say kidnapping your ex-lover/foster sibling’s daughter and forcing her to marry your son isn’t what I would call a romantic gesture. Or is it? It’s complicated.

Sometimes I find a half-scrawled story like the one above months later, and forget where I was going with it. I no longer connect with the character, so it is abandoned to the center console or the glovebox.

As I started college—and as my frontal lobe began cooking on high—I pulled Why Clichés off of Amazon for almost two years. I was horrified at the idea that I had undertaken a project relying on expertise at such an early age. I ended up privatizing the book after rereading it and being repulsed by how mean it is:

Either way, I’ve always considered myself a Texan. I like a good steak, my dad worked on his family’s ranch in Juarez and knew how to butcher any kind of livestock, and I proudly stood to chant the Texas state pledge every school day from 3rd grade into my senior year. On the other hand, I never learned “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” What was the point when I lived on the thumb?

I’ll admit, some of the modern book cover trends are not my favorite, but now I see them with more positivity. They make me consider the new readers— the ones stepping into the literary world for the first time.

My mind’s eye becomes that of a tlaquetzqui, and I find my soul operating on a different plane. I understand it all. I don’t know if it was the references to the music of my childhood or the red wine starting to kick in (maybe a mixture of both?), but I felt a wave of admiration come over me.

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