This past summer, “murder hornets” became high-profile pests, joining the ranks of monarch butterflies and bumblebees as insects that capture our attention.
There must’ve been some incident, something to push both Dickinson and Proust into isolation, the horse thought as a student, but now he thinks time and immortality require one’s full attention.
Confusion is the foreigner’s advantage. Natives tamp the nuance in their sounds. Stranger seeking refuge pockets vowels, picks gesture, learns body, gets caught up on the cobble
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “that perches in the soul.” The avian image is both lovely and apposite, for as a bird goes winging off at the first loud noise or sight of a predator, so hope—an aspect of desire, a...
