“When the spiders arrive in my dream, are they jolting me to risk vulnerability personally or creatively? I could stay inside collecting dust, or I could weave my web where others can see. If rejected, could I have the temerity to take the silk back, gobbling up my own words and trying again in some […]
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How Silence Protects and Harms Us (plus the Week’s Top 5)
“We still fight with the same Vietnamese stubbornness that is in our blood. I struggle with knowing far more English than Vietnamese. As you age, I fret about the ultimate silence of losing you. Although this dynamic will never go away, there have been new rhetorical tools to soften our challenges. Phrases like ‘I’m sorry’ […]
It’s So Sublime, and Our Top 5
“When I listened, I didn’t know if it was something I entered, or something that entered me. If it was within me or if it was me. Do you remember being 16 and loving a song? Of course you do. It felt like that. It felt like everything.” This week, we’re featuring “On (the) Sublime,” […]
Odes to the Heart and the Week’s Top 5
“There is something about the heart. It beats until it doesn’t. I don’t give or withhold permission. To live my life is to accept—in this one, life-giving ongoingness that occurs right at the heart of me—that I am not the center of this story.” August is just around the corner, and as we fly through the year […]
People vs. 👻, Townspeople vs. Nazis, and Our Top 5
“The new bridge is square where the old bridge is round, bustling instead of deserted, awash in the sounds of schools and neighborhoods nearby. At some point, Lydia’s haunting shifted along with the traffic patterns. She’s been seen at both bridges, but the new one is the only place she might still hail passing motorists.” […]
A Reading List on Succession, Stories About Unnatural Disasters, and This Week’s Top 5
“These people may have all the money in the world, but as the last four seasons have shown us in vivid, lacerating detail, their cold, loveless lives inspire little envy.” Welcome to the weekend! The final episode of Succession airs this Sunday, and to mark the end of this show about TV’s most dysfunctional media-empire […]
The Search for Answers, and the Week’s Top 5
We become better in many ways, but it’s the best writers who give us the information and context required to do so, and let us do the work to get there.
Interspecies Communication, An Ultra-Incredible Recovery, and Our Top 5
“From the mycelial ‘wood wide web’ to smart slime molds and political honeybees, science is demonstrating that humans don’t monopolize language or intelligence.” With advancements in artificial intelligence, scientists are learning more about the ways non-human species communicate with each other—and how they might communicate with us. In this week’s new reading list, “Wild Talk,” Sam […]
30 Years Later: Groove Theory, “Groove Theory”
“Groove Theory” tries to make the work of staying in love feel as easy as possible, even when it isn’t.
Enduring Battles, a Musical Childhood, and Our Top 5
“I felt like a rat trapped in a maze with no finish, running into walls and getting electrocuted at every turn. I wanted out of the hellscape I’d created, but I had formed a whole identity around the latticework of visible bones and tendons; my days were structured around the denial of food. To give […]

