September 2023
The Portal
There had been no omens to suggest that, by going through the portal a second time, Amber would ruin the rest of her life: no bats circling the entrance nor enormous crows cawing ominously from nearby branches. Even if there had been bats and crows, I believe Amber would have gone anyway.
Sunbeams
One imagines the birth of happiness to be accompanied by some great spectacular upheaval. One can imagine it flowering in the most luxurious setting. Yet happiness is born of a trifle, feeds on nothing.
No Small Wonder
Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe
Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.
A Face In Judgment
A young man stands at the lectern: nineteen years old, athletic, thick black hair down to his shoulders. I’ll call him Marco. Today my job is to decide whether to send him to prison.
What I Don’t Tell My Wife
There are many things I don’t tell my wife of ten years: Because she has asked me not to. Because she carries her own burdens. Because she has told me mine are too much.
Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen
We are thirteen, my cousin Sally and me — girls on our own, on the roam, under the big skies of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We’re here for the summer, living in a trailer that my aunt Helen has rented as part of a lengthy effort to seduce her law-school professor Phil, who lives next door.
Please Be Patient, Student Driver
My classmates were all getting their driver’s licenses. Like any of us had anywhere important to go. They drove cars their parents had gifted them, either a hand-me-down or a brand-new lease. I was the last without a provisional license and the only one without a car parked outside Shane Yamamoto’s house.
A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
A Brief And Highly Subjective Appreciation Of Fifty Years Of Sun Covers
One history that especially fascinates me is The Sun’s. On the wall of my office is a calendar the magazine sent to subscribers — all forty or so of them — at the beginning of 1977. It’s outdated and nonfunctional, but I hung it there because of its . . . well, grooviness. I like the horoscope-adjacent artwork and the handmade feel. It’s very much a product of its time, the kind of thing my brother would call “crunchy.”
Total Solar
We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.
The Art Of Living
My fly line unspools across the water like a long sentence / whose final punctuation is a grizzly hackle tied by a friend. / He clamped his fly vise to the branch of a fallen pine / right after we arrived by mule train at this Montana river.