I can’t tell you why I rented the theater downtown, other than that it was inevitable, like the notes of a song. Facing the rows of empty velvet seats, I felt the thrust of potential. At night, doctors stood on stage telling stories—not of...
Time is the distance between birth and death. Parallel universes appear in real time on your screen. Place is an illusion. For instance, I am in the Palace of Versailles.
Looking back on 2020 feels a lot like looking back on two years at once. Or maybe it’s two countries—or, more precisely, dissonant ideas of a country I thought I knew well enough, even with a healthy skepticism, but whose transformation and...
Polly’s problem after the accident, really one of her largest problems, was an inability to prune what she saw and what she thought, to stop her brain. She was both too easily distracted and too attentive. When she’d gotten out of the...
Forgive me, I have smuggled them away from my father’s house to this sodden pitch in the middle of my life, their names asleep under my tongue. I have walked
I’ve been working for the Chicago Tribune for about a year when it strikes me that I will go home in six months. The ticket has been booked, and I’m ready. My boss has reviewed the JavaScript code and made his updates for the day. The code...
to practice intense study. to research. to seek again. to require confirmation, a proof. to believe. to believe in knowing because it can be said again and again. the proving of a theorem. now the corollary: to have learned
