Sy Safransky
Sy Safransky is founder and editor of The Sun. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
— From December 2023November 2001
If we could ask the people who died in the attacks what to do now, I wonder what they would say. Wouldn’t we want to take time to listen to all their voices? Voices of rage. Voices of sorrow. Voices of compassion. Voices of hate. Voices that say, Do something. Voices that say, Don’t do something stupid.
November 2001October 2001
I realized that this is what so often happens when we come face to face with some unimaginable horror: we run for help, but no one believes us. No one believes how many species are disappearing, how many prisoners are being tortured, how many women are being broken by self-important men.
October 2001September 2001
One way to love myself is to stand still when sadness comes sweeping in like a storm. This means not judging the storm, and not condemning myself for getting drenched; three-quarters of the world is covered in water.
September 2001August 2001
It’s important to recognize my imperfections; it’s also important to stop pretending I’m less than I am. This morning, I woke up suffused with a love no words can describe. But in a few minutes, I was reaching for my dog-eared script, already forgetting the radiance that had permeated my being.
August 2001July 2001
The Titantic is split in two; it sinks. That’s the story of the Titanic. That’s my story, too, hitting the same iceberg again and again, and never quite believing it.
July 2001May 2001
I’m here in the early-morning darkness, a congregation of one. I’m here, just one more man who thinks he deserves God’s ear, as if God had time for everyone who reached out. I’m here, reaching.
May 2001April 2001
When we see ourselves as we truly are, we call it “enlightenment”; we call it “salvation.” The words don’t matter. What matters is that the broken heart is lifted; the light returns.
April 2001March 2001
How I yearn to be a better man, though I know that’s just a different kind of greed.
March 2001February 2001
I don’t believe that clothes make the man. Then why am I still a little proud that I own only one suit?
February 2001She’ll Wrap Her Arms Around Us
The house wasn’t yellow when we moved in, but it needed a fresh coat of paint. I regretted the choice almost immediately. All that yellow made the ramshackle building too bright, too cheerful, too . . . yellow. It hardly looked like the home of a serious little magazine. But, for thirteen years, that’s what it was.
January 2001December 2000
We fell asleep the usual way, Norma curled against me, the cats between us at the foot of the bed. At three in the morning, she woke up, violently sick from something she’d eaten, and spent the next two hours throwing up. I knelt beside her in the bathroom, my arm around her shoulder. There are many positions for love.
December 2000
