Michael Wu's Blue Shoes

The wind rushes across my backyard on a cloudy afternoon. I reach down to grab the starter cable on the lawnmower. It’s always a gamble with this thing. It has broken down twice already, and it only becomes jankier each time I fix it. One of these days I’m going to have to put it out of its misery. Until then, though, this grass isn’t going to cut itself… Landscaping is one of the quintessential activities performed by any suburban homeowner. A shocking amount of time and effort must go into making sure the plants around your house are presentable. All for what? More rapport with your neighbors? A nicer-looking place for your pets to roam around in? It only kind-of makes sense, and apparently that’s enough for people to start caring. The lawn takes just over an hour to mow under good conditions. I used to run the lawnmower out of gas before finishing the whole thing, but since then I’ve gotten faster. I always follow the same pattern: backyard before front yard, beginning at the outer ...

Today we're writing a biography for your late grandfather. I bet he was a great man, but how exactly are we going to piece his life together? He may have had some old pieces of writing lying around: letters, journals, or other miscellaneous documents. That seems like enough right? Wrong. These formal writings do not give us the full picture. Think of all the things he might have written that have been thrown away. How many new perspectives could be gained from reading those recycled pages? We may never find out, but the point I’m trying to make is this: your life is garbage, and you’re underestimating that fact. I’m not saying that your life is meaningless (unless it is, in which case it’s still not my problem). I’m saying that we, as human beings, tend to ignore how much our lives are represented within our trash, or other things we deem worthless. We can be very different writers when we know that what we write will be preserved. But equally important is what we choose to write w...