The Best of the Severed Branch
More writing is coming soon! In the meantime, here are my personal favorites from my 2022 writing project
Above: Killarney National Park, Ireland (photo my own)
The Severed Branch was my 2022 writing project to complete and publish 50 essays in a year. I am proud of myself for seeing this through! The whole experience pushed me to new levels of self-discipline. I love a great deal of what I wrote. That said, some sentences make me cringe, and I am happier with certain essays than others!
If you’re new to my writing and are interested in exploring my past essays, these are my personal favorite selections from The Severed Branch. Please enjoy, and don’t forget to subscribe to AndrewJelinek.substack.com for my future writing! Thank you so much for your support! More writing is coming soon.
#47: A Hunger for Rewards at the Grocery Store
Just think of where your rewards could take you! (Photo my own) The little old lady at the cash register awakened within me the forgotten but primal instincts. The private religion which I had cultivated for nearly a decade as a devotee of credit cards had fallen out of my practice, but this rickety sage was conjuring me back home. “Do you have a ShopRit…
#50: Beyond the Limits of Atheism
“You’re being very… chill about this,” I say cautiously. “Considering you’re a passionate atheist and everything, you’re accepting the notion of a spirit demon very… gracefully.” …. “The thing about being an atheist is I don’t have a problem with belief
#23: A Journey in Antiquity from Britain to Afghanistan
Above: Constantine in the Battle of Milvian Bridge, the Angels of God above (wikimedia)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Although I have long glamorized lengthy journeys across the surface of this great celestial body, I have yet to attain my dream of traveling across Eurasia in the third …
#32: Friendship Gained and Lost
Cluj, Romania is one of the places where I thought about you (photo my own, April 2009) I remember the long afternoons sitting in our dorm room, reading on the futon, pretending you and I existed only in the candlelight which smelled of lavender and spiritual connection. We schemed to read
#22: The Nightmare of the Byzantine Empire
Above: inside the Hagia Sophia, built under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (photo my own)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
#1: Revisiting the New Testament
Above: Muckross Abbey in Killarney National Park, Ireland (November 2021)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Eighteen years ago, as a high schooler, I embarked on a journey for the salvation of my soul. I wrote long posts on the Internet about how women shouldn’t wear bikinis or short skirts…
#17: Friends, Novels, and FOMO as a Way of Life
Above: a view at Prospect Park, Brooklyn (which I probably didn’t savor enough)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I woke up on the floor of my friend’s apartment. Last I remembered, we had all gotten back sometime after 10 o’clock from a minor league soccer game followed by dinner and drink…
#45: Existential Downsides to Reading on a Kindle
Sometimes, I think that the Kindle is simply the dystopian realization of an awful nightmare where books, transformed into mere files on a computer, serve only to convey information and tell stories. Reading on a Kindle is like being confined to a treadmill in a hotel basement’s fitness center when I could be running through fresh air and fall foliage a…
#31: Journey to the Big Dipper (Dream Report)
Above: A blurry view from a night walk (photo my own) I am a rich woman now, which is to say that I finally command the capital which I require to find you. I gaze out at the Big Dipper from my sky palace, imagining you out there. Just outside the columns of colossal rectangular windows towering over me, bird armies majestically circle the high-tech clou…
#44: Morality and Purpose in a Christian Universe
Above: St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague (photo my own) I had dinner recently with a devout French Catholic wearing an elaborate crucifix. He told me he could not imagine what it would be like to go from believing in God to believing in nothing. “It must have been very difficult for you,” he said. “I could never do it.” “Of course,” I told him. “It was a very …
#27: Plunging into the Kurdish Regions of Southeast Turkey
Above: Akdamar Island in Lake Van, Turkey (photos my own) July 2010 It was at dusk that I arrived by intercity van in the Kurdish city of Dogubayazit near the border with Iran. It was a cramped ride in a three-row vehicle. The middle row lacked three full seats, so a rickety stool had been placed on the van’s carpet near the sliding door instead. Seemingl…
#25: Full Moon Party in Cappadocia
Above: A farm seen on a hike in Cappadocia (pictures my own)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. July 2010 I was sitting with a large group of other backpackers on a restaurant’s patio in a small town in Cappadocia, Turkey. We were finishing our dinner and the sun had nearly finished setting. …
#13: Yearnings for the Past in Freiburg and Elsewhere
Above: Freiburg, Germany (photo is my own, summer 2009)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When I revisit the sacred settings of an emotional attachment to another human being, I usually have the eerie sense that some version of the person is still there. A fragment of their light which they…
#2: Ireland's Imperial and Religious Legacies
Above: The view over Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland (November 2021)Thanks for reading The Severed Branch! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “I don’t want to kill a 20-year-old girl just because she’s a Protestant.” He let those words hang in the air for a moment while he looked at me.