An invitation to the reader:

Welcome.

This blog is less a destination than a trail — a place where essays, poems, fragments, dreams, encounters, and the occasional half-formed idea sit side by side. Some pieces are polished, others exploratory, and many fall somewhere in between. Together they form a record of thinking in public: an archive of questions, observations, and small moments that refuse to disappear.

You’ll find writing about books, music, travel, teaching, memory, and the strange theater of everyday life. There are character sketches and reflective essays, philosophical detours and narrative experiments, along with pieces drawn from longer projects that continue to evolve. The organizing principle, if there is one, is curiosity — about people, process, and the quiet patterns that shape our lives.

This is not a blog that demands linear reading. You can wander. Follow titles that catch your eye, linger where something resonates, skip what doesn’t. The fragments matter as much as the finished work; the process is part of the story.

If you stay awhile, you may notice recurring themes: chance encounters, music as memory, institutions and their rituals, fleeting intimacy, and the persistent attempt to make meaning from incomplete information. None of it claims authority. Much of it invites conversation.

So consider this an open door rather than a thesis statement. Below are ten pieces that open the world of the Kyotokibbitzer.

Take what speaks to you. Leave what doesn’t.
And thank you for reading.

On a Guy Called Whit (with a Cameo from Ambassador Rahm Emanuel)

A brief reflection on two very different figures whose trajectories intersect in unexpected ways — ambition, style, power, and the art of navigating institutions that both enable and constrain. Part character sketch, part political observation, and part meditation on how personality shapes public life.

Less about verdicts than about contrasts, patterns, and the subtle theater of influence.

Whit. Rahm. The distance between them is smaller than it first appears.

Why It Is So Hard to Get Breakfast in Japan (with a dream cameo from the Gemini Donald Trump)

A wandering reflection that begins with the band Japanese Breakfast and drifts through a dream involving Trump, Gemini dualities, and the surprisingly real challenge of finding a proper breakfast in Japan. Music, memory, politics, astrology, and morning hunger collide in a piece about longing, identity, and the small rituals that anchor us.

Sometimes breakfast is just breakfast. Sometimes it’s a metaphor.

The Thin Man in Singapore Part I: Washing Ashore

The Thin Man arrives in Singapore — a city of immaculate surfaces, humid undercurrents, and quiet transactions that rarely announce themselves. Jet lag, hotel corridors, chance encounters, and the sense that something has already begun before he understands the rules.

Part travel vignette, part noir drift, Part I sets the stage for a story about arrival, anonymity, and the strange intimacy of cities that never quite belong to you.

Sometimes you don’t land in a place. You wash ashore.

On Childhood Abuse

A reflective piece on memory, silence, and the long shadow early experiences can cast over identity and relationships. Less a story than an attempt to name complexity — the ways resilience and vulnerability often coexist, and how understanding can emerge slowly, imperfectly, over time.

This is a quiet, serious post about difficult terrain — and the possibility of clarity without easy conclusions.

On the Eventfulness of Pre-Eventified Incidents

A meditation on the strange category of moments that feel ordinary as they unfold but acquire meaning only in retrospect — encounters, remarks, small detours, and seemingly trivial decisions that later reveal themselves as quietly decisive.

Part philosophical reflection, part narrative inquiry, this piece explores how events are often constructed after the fact, and how the texture of life lives in the space before significance is assigned.

The Genius Razzlekhan and the Phony Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A provocative comparative sketch that juxtaposes spectacle and credibility, performance and authority, asking how public personas are constructed — and deconstructed — in the age of viral identity. Moving between crypto theater, intellectual branding, and the blurred line between insight and self-mythology, the piece explores what we mean when we call someone a “genius.”

Less a verdict than an inquiry into reputation, performance, and the strange economics of attention.

On My Interlude Between Hamilton College and Japan, 1996 and early 1997

A reflective look at the in-between months after graduation — a period marked by uncertainty, quiet experimentation, and the subtle realization that departure is already underway before the ticket is booked. Jobs half-pursued, friendships in transition, and the slow formation of a life that would soon relocate across the Pacific.
Part memory piece, part coming-of-age reflection, this post explores the strange clarity that only emerges in retrospect from life’s transitional chapters.

On My Seven Years Under Dr. Charles Fox

A reflective account of mentorship, hierarchy, and the complicated dynamics that shape professional formation over time. What begins as admiration gradually unfolds into a more nuanced understanding of authority, influence, and the subtle lessons that extend beyond the classroom.

Part tribute, part reckoning, this piece explores what it means to learn under someone — and how those formative years continue to echo long after they end.

On the Federal Age of Consent: A Reply to Alan Dershowitz

A reflective essay on boundaries, intention, and the quiet complexities that shape human connection. Moving beyond slogans and simple frameworks, the piece explores consent as an ongoing conversation — one shaped by context, power, vulnerability, and the imperfect nature of communication itself.

On the Safe Space (aka Corner Girl)

Less about rules than awareness, and more about listening than certainty.

A reflective essay on the evolving idea of the “safe space” — where protection, openness, and intellectual challenge intersect in sometimes uneasy ways. Drawing on classroom experience and broader cultural debates, the piece explores how safety can enable growth while also risking insulation, and why genuine dialogue often lives in the tension between comfort and discomfort. Along the way, the essay revisits the vulnerability of first love as a reminder that safety has always been entangled with exposure.

Less a verdict than an invitation to rethink what safety really means.

On My Week with Isobel (aka London Girl) Part III: Aftermath

“I did not sleep with her, so I had to quit my job.” Isobel III tells the story behind that unlikely truth — a memoir of emotional ignition, creative awakening, and the fleeting connections that quietly reorder a life.