Browse Topics

Chair/Body/Home

What would it take for me to no longer want to leave my body? What would it take for me to see my body as my home? I don’t know, really, except perhaps more exposure to different ideas about disability, different ideas about beauty and worth.

Coffee

A family business, a workplace lifeline, a reminder of home

Observations On Ice

We have been repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by calving ice. Yet I still hope to see it: a spectacle of devastation. Reveal yourself to me, I demand. The glacier answers with silence.

Speaking Of Tongues

Justin E.H. Smith On The Mysteries Of Language

This is an extremely creative and spontaneous moment for language. There are whole sociolects that you and I don’t even know about, because we’re too old or we don’t belong to the communities of people who have come up with them. Emoji are fascinating because they’re a return to the ideographic sources of a lot of writing.

This Month In Sun History

Our 50^th Year Of Publication

Sitting with his first wife, Judy, and a friend on a sunny beach in Algeciras, Spain, Sy Safransky embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately led him to create the magazine you now hold in your hand. In March 1970, for the first time, he placed a tab of LSD on his tongue. He was twenty-five years old.

Thursdays For Haru

Haru Jenkins’s husband has been abducted at 3:23 AM every Thursday for six years. . . . It should go without saying that aliens abduct him.

Sunbeams

Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

Carl Sagan

I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For

Often, when I’m out wandering with my camera, some kind person will help me with directions, then call out as I’m heading down the road, “I hope you find what you’re looking for!” It’s a wish that floats around in my mind, challenging me.

Ohashi Bridge In The Rain

When we met for lunch, she wore a dark silk dress and red lipstick. At the school where we both taught, she always dressed practically: plastic boots, a raincoat over a faded blue sweatshirt, a white sailor’s cap.