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Phillip
Le.

I am a storyteller, designer, and kung fu practitioner based in New York. Through words, images, and movement, I explore what happens when:

  • Discipline creates space for discovery
  • Rigor and wandering coexist
  • Precision meets play

precision * play

— pinned
Featured// observation

A Chink in My Armor

They say you build a thick hide the more you endure. I still feel soft inside, though the metal armor I've slowly wrapped around my identity continues to dent and ding with the passing of time.

2016
Featured// memoir

Egg Yolk Subway

Time. Like passing trains on parallel tracks. I'm crammed into one in New York, and then Boston, then Chicago. In every car I see clear, lucid frames, my window intersecting with the windows of the passing carts, all quick snapshots in time.

2016
2022
// essay

To Decide: Breaking through imposter syndrome

There's a concept in Japanese Karate called kime (決め), which translates into "to decide." In martial arts terms, it signifies the act of channeling all your muscle, technique, will power, and belief into a singular, focused, decisive execution of a technique.

2022
// essay

Choosing our responses.

Looking back over these last few months, there has been a lot of joy. But there has been a lot of sorrow too. And while that's a lot of daily opposition outside of our control, what I've come to learn is that there is one thing in spite of it all that we can control: our responses and the meaning we make together in the face of struggle.

2022
// essay

In times like these.

Companies like to measure how we perform under pressure and use that as indication about who we are, what we're capable of, and what we deserve. I also think it's important we observe how companies show up under pressure, to see what it says about them and their character.

2022
2020
// essay

While the city burns.

The fear we're feeling due to the protests tonight — imagine feeling that sort of fear everyday. Now magnify that fear to every facet of living in our society. That's why the country is on fire right now.

2020
// essay

America, Where.

This is America. Where protesting masks and health ordinances with threats of violence is deemed patriotic while protesting systemic murder is seen as thuggery.

2020
2015
// essay

Struggle Against Entropy

We aren't owed anything in this world and I personally do not believe the universe has any inherent meaning specifically lawed by nature for us humans, the minuscule things that we are in the greater vastness of space. And yet, despite believing such, life is full of poetry.

2015
// essay

"The Struggle Is Real." — Sisyphus

We are struggling, in the final truth, to become ourselves — people worthy of the existential privilege of the small, vast debt of life we have been granted by destiny. Embrace it. And when able, enjoy it.

2015
2013
// essay

Legacy

As my family tells it, his face—with its defined lines grooved by dirt, strife and time—held a solemn look most days. Weary or apathy was not the matter, it was a face well worn. A face having spent time in his village watching the nearby river slowly dismantle the fading banks.

2013
2012
// memoir

Rain-streaked Windows

Again the rain begins. And so it's been. Stare long enough out there into that rain-streaked window and you may start to lose sight of the picture on the other side.

2012