Sy Safransky

A Prayer

This is the 250th issue of The Sun. Given the life expectancy of most small journals, I’d like to offer a prayer of thanks. But on which knee? To which God? I’ve always been reluctant to identify myself with any spiritual path. I don’t even like to use the word spiritual, because it divides the world into what is and what isn’t.

August 1996

Oh perfect word, shaped to meaning like a body without an ounce of fat: supple, strong, walking through the centuries like a god.

Glorious Failure

Bad news is supposed to travel fast, but this news took nearly three months to get from a snowcapped mountain in Vermont to my office in North Carolina. It finally arrived on a beautiful spring afternoon, eyes downcast, dragging its heels.

Friend Of The Sun

Where The Parking Lot Is Now

I wondered how I’d feel when the place was gone. It would stay alive in my memory, but I couldn’t take much comfort from that. Memories we’re sure are indelible — how long do they really last?

January 1996

Truth can’t sign its name, can’t read lengthy contracts, can’t afford a lawyer. Truth depends on us to speak it.

December 1995

I keep imagining that someday I’ll get caught up: write those letters, read those books. What a great imagination!

Holiday Offer

Philadelphia

As we waited outside the theater for Pam to arrive, the late-afternoon sun buttery and generous, I was struck by how healthy everyone looked: we could have been the bowling team, the swim club. AIDS seemed remote for a moment: distant, unreal, a bad dream from which the world would one day awaken. 

July 1995

Where The Wind Comes Sweeping

House Speaker Newt Gingrich insists there’s no connection between reactionary rhetoric and reactionary violence.