JONAH KRUVANT

People gather in collective silence

in a state of stupefaction 

to gaze at this waterfall,

its ferocious energy somehow soothing,

its spray a vast wispy cloud so opaque

we sense its movement through the mist,

the fog in our head lifted

as we simply be, 

awed and unencumbered.

Mossy rocks emerge and surround the canyon

as the breeze of Dettifoss

flips the page of my weathered notebook,

but I don’t want to leave just yet.

I’ve found a p...

Unless you go to a place, there is no way to really know what it’s like. Before going somewhere, we form pictures in our heads of what we perceive it to be like, based on what we learn, hear, or see around us. For example, I couldn’t understand, when I first moved to Japan, why Japanese homes didn’t look like the old bamboo huts in a Miyazaki anime film. Equally surprised was my Japanese friend, Masataka, when he learned that...

One evening in Warsaw, after a long day of visiting museums and memorials, I stumbled upon a Chopin concert. After learning of the worst in World War II, the unavoidable lessons of the brutality and cruelty that humankind is capable of, the concert reminded me that humans are also capable of something else. At the Warsaw Cemetery, visitors turned silent when they viewed the mass grave in front of them. The way the pianist evok...

Here I sit in the center of the Krakow Ghetto. It’s impossible to convey the reality of what went on here, the horrors unimaginable. A place where “mercy” is a forgotten word. Where cruelty and brutality were commonplace. A place that more than anything has forced us to question humanity. It’s impossible to comprehend the Holocaust. But we must never forget it.

            How does it feel that it was my people who were persecu...

I didn’t know what to expect when I first arrived in Poland. Would it be safe? Would I have enough to eat as a vegetarian? Was I going to Western Europe, Eastern Europe…or Northern Europe?

            As for the last question, it would turn out that it was a fusion of all three, yet at the same time, none at all. Partitioned by Germany and Russia, western Poland has an intricate system of train lines and highways built by the G...

The following is the first of a series of blog posts from my trip to Israel and Poland, an exploration into my family and cultural roots.

            Summer for a teacher offers limitless possibilities. In addition to preparing for the next school year, many teachers work summer programs; some catch up on sleep, reading, and their favorite Netflix series; and others go to the beach or Italy or Honolulu. Me? I chose to study the...

My summer trip this year was to Switzerland and my assumptions of Swiss culture were shattered immediately upon arrival. The Swiss are “efficient,” I’d been told. “Their trains run like clockwork.” Yet my first train from Zurich Airport into the city malfunctioned and everyone had to vacate the train.

I was reminded, within the first few minutes of arriving in this new land, that you cannot begin to understand a place and its p...

As we descend down the trail, the view of Pololu does not get any less spectacular. Cliffs jut out along the Pacific out into the distance, just to the edge of human perception. Waterfalls, like tiny vertical white lines, cascade down the farthest cliff, but they look static and unreachable from the trail.

We curve around, dodging rocks until we hit bottom, to be met with two equally magnificent and utterly different lands...

A friend of mine recently won his first case as a trial lawyer. He let everyone know on Facebook and received plenty of “likes.” But then a week later, he posted something different. He said he felt confused. He didn’t understand why he wasn’t happy.

Out for brunch with a different set of friends, I listened as one announced that she was dating a new guy. The first thing she mentioned was that he is a doctor, and everyone congr...

Everyone has an opinion about the election. This blog post is not about this writer’s opinion on Hillary or Trump. I’m more interested in what, if anything, we can learn from the election that goes beyond politics. I want to dig deeper because, well, I’m a writer, and that’s what I like to do.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that most people I speak to about the election are casting their vote not based on someone they s...