ellakotsen

The Welfare Supervisor

The blacktop has been cracked ever since I first took the job here. Over the years grass and clovers have grown over the ridges and onto the black valleys. Basketballs have memorized other paths toward the basket and shoes have learned how to avoid an embarrassing trip-up. The train station platform has fewer cracks andContinue reading “The Welfare Supervisor”

Lunch at Back Beach

It started with the unlikely monotony of a toothbrush, a nalgene full of irony pump-water, a tube of toothpaste on its last leg, and an entire ocean. My obsession with routines— supported by the anti-routine nature of living on a boat that’s shape is entirely decided by a formation of tides, winds, and forces completelyContinue reading “Lunch at Back Beach”

José Carlos Mariátegui’s Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality

Mariátegui is an individual I was introduced to when I read his essay “The Indian Problem” for one of my classes this semester. I instantly related to a lot of his points and was interested in his takes that seemed to enter a realm beyond what I was used to reading from Marxist European scholars.Continue reading “José Carlos Mariátegui’s Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality”

Oh, Just Lately

A lot has happened since I last wrote to you all. I finished my junior year of college with a bang and a flash— actually enjoying some of my finals which made it all the more special. Particularly, my favorites were writing about “Commodified Reenactments to Cure Terminal Trauma in Tom McCarthy’s Remainder” and anContinue reading “Oh, Just Lately”

College Students who are Mere Capitalist Critics and Queer Platonic Love

Lately, I have learned to love to turn my noise-canceling headphones on in my room with my picturesque forest scape and an artificial green-pond moat. I exist within these four walls and in whatever sounds I choose and that feels like the ultimate source of comfort. I guess there are two parts to this story. Continue reading “College Students who are Mere Capitalist Critics and Queer Platonic Love”

Believing in Yourself

I’m realizing that all those times I didn’t consider myself smart were merely shadows. Thoughts and reflections that follow you and copy you. That reflects your truest forms and simplest motions. I’d hear people tell me about the hours they stay up grinding and doing work and I thought that meant I wasn’t trying hardContinue reading “Believing in Yourself”

Running Out of the Woods, Facing North

There is this vivid memory I have in my head. After my initial depressive shockwave that took over the entirety of my soul for the first two weeks of the start of the Covid19 pandemic, I was looking for an opposite feeling. And for a while, I found a tiny bit of that. While IContinue reading “Running Out of the Woods, Facing North”

The Mapper

There’s a picture from a children’s book I really like. It’s a landscape in a boy’s figure who seems to be flying over an otherwise solid color. I have dreams sort of like this except the exact opposite. Instead, I fly as an empty figure over a landscape or the gentle curves of a massContinue reading “The Mapper”

Monotony of Metropolitan Life and the Inherent Fluidity of the Natural

Imagine you live in two houses throughout your life. The first house is an old structure overturned by unkempt ivy and lush moss. It sits in the middle of a dense forest with a mountain view of a deep blue lake. You wake up every morning and go through your daily steps that usually leadContinue reading “Monotony of Metropolitan Life and the Inherent Fluidity of the Natural”

A Brief Book Review: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

In a time where those other than you are filming destruction and not filming it, posting infographics, and not making infographics about others; in a time where the history of US intervention and murder is being blatantly ignored; I am choosing to write this. As I write, I am thinking about those in Ukraine, butContinue reading “A Brief Book Review: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne”