The Power Of Story

Jared Seide On How Listening To Each Other Can Restore Our Humanity

People want to celebrate the things that symbolize generosity and goodness in their lives. To share that with others and have others understand that this means something to you — that’s an extraordinary act of communion.

Just This Breath

I can’t see the virus, but I feel its seeds in me. I can’t see my faith, but I feel its seeds in me, too.

Last Writes

My friend possessed the inclination and the ability to turn her experience of the world into a language that insisted on delighting in itself.

The Ramshackle Garden Of Affection

Dear Ross: How can you miss on purpose? If I’m late getting back on defense, you’ll bounce the ball off the bottom of the rim and catch the “rebound” for a point. Alone under the basket. Missing.

Dear Noah: Bouncing the ball off the bottom of the rim is, as you say, a poorly missed shot, but also a perfectly missed one, because it results in a point in our game, which means it’s a way for me to stay on the court. If there were a way I could stay on the court without cheating — without those perfectly, beautifully missed shots — believe me, I would do it.

Selected Poems

— from “Wanting Not Wanting” | I wish I didn’t / want things / to be other / than they are

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Life Before The Virus

I. / I remember shaking hands: / damp sweaty hands and dry scratchy hands, / bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes, / two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched / between a pair of big beefy palms.