"What are we talking about in 2020? Kobe Bryant, Covid-19, social distancing, Zoom, TikTok, Navarro cheerleading, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylore, and...The presidential election. A country divided. Opinions on both sides. It's everywhere: on the news, on the late-night shows, in the papers, online, online, online..." -Elin Hilderbrand (28 Summers) I read an…
"Look at me. Even though I'm safe, back in my comfortable home, I'm still acting like a refugee--scavenging, foraging, guarding my small space, waiting out the end of the war. I'm going to survive, I know that. Someday I will talk about this calmly and insightfully. And for a good many years after that, I…
It goes without saying that moving is a tricky business. You collect your things, box them up carefully (or haphazardly; it really depends on the stage of the process), and, ultimately, hope for the best. The last time the Greek and I did this, we were sure that some of the potholes we…
It is terribly true, even if the truth does not comfort, that if you look at the moon for long enough night after night, as I have, you will see that the old cartoons are correct, that the moon is, in fact, laughing. But it is not laughing at us, we lonely humans, who are…
Almost two years ago, in the middle of my first winter back on the east coast, I decided that, come March, I was going on a trip. As somebody who likes to travel, there wasn't anything terribly novel about this decision. But I suppose you could say that, given that I was planning on going…
It's easy to get swept away by the everyday: barking dogs, disrupted sleep, the feeling that you are waiting for something that continues to elude you. I realized recently that our lives in Delaware, or what I've come to refer to affectionately as "Limbo Land," can seem fairly one note; this may be because, as…
What happens to you doesn't belong to you, only half concerns you. It's not yours. Not yours only. - Claudia Rankine, qtd. in Tayari Jones' An American Marriage If you pay attention to such things, you may have noticed that many books and movies, before launching into their primary narrative, have a little section--a…
It's funny what time does: each day a drop of water, and without you realizing it, the stone below the drops wears a smooth divot. -Claire Messud (The Burning Girl) Here we are, suddenly in mid-February. The days have grown just a little bit longer and, although the sun has gone into temporary hiding (his…
People are starting to get sick of a life lived so intensely on the grid. They wish for more anonymity online. They're experiencing fatigue with ebooks, with dating apps, with social media. They're craving something else in this era of quantified selves, and tracked locations, and indexed answers to every possible question. Except, perhaps the…
Meanwhile, Peri found solace in literature. Short stories, novels, poems, plays...she devoured whatever she could lay her hands on at the limited library at school. When there was nothing else to be found, she read encyclopedias. Devouring everything from Aardvark to Zombie, she came to know about things that, though of no current use in…
Dining with Dostoevsky 