There’s a pigeon skeleton on my fire escape. A partial pigeon skeleton. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved in.

Today is a two-show day. We have two or three of those a week. The concept was fairly new to me when I came aboard 10 months ago. I can’t say two-show days are my favorite days though I have gotten used to them. I think they feel so strange partly because doing matinees of this particular musical has always felt a bit bizarre. Phantom seems more like an evening activity…

I’d been to Montreal before. A few times actually. The time I remember best was in 2003. I’d just turned 11, and I spent a few weeks there with my mom while she did a production of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with Opéra de Montréal at the Place des Arts...

Manhattan is much cuter when you have a scheduled departure date. Now that I know I’m leaving for a while, the despair of seeing its grit stretch infinitely out in front of me fades into the endearment tourists must feel, the kind of endearment that makes you stare up at tall buildings and obey crosswalk signals...

I didn’t get my learner’s permit right away. I wasn’t road hungry like the kids whose moms picked them up early from school on their 16th birthday and brought them straight to the DMV to take the permit test...

I wandered The Strand Bookstore’s three floors for over an hour, picking things up and putting them down...

The last time I went home to my parents’ house, I found a picture of myself at about seven years old...