We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Browse Topics
Mental Health
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Pioneers
We checked out of the motel and ate breakfast in an old diner next to a gas station. Teresa ordered a child’s portion of pancakes, and they came with a whipped-cream smiley face. I ordered a skillet named after a World War II battleship.
August 2012The Dog-Eared Page
The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us
When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy.
August 2012Quotations
Sunbeams
July 2012No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, . . . and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
Poetry
My Totally Awesome World
My husband has just left for work, and I’m already knotted / by the window, watching him like a dog. I should paw the glass. / I’ve got problems, man. Let’s get that out of the way.
May 2012Fiction
Imagination
An inventive imagination was a gift of the gods — or a curse if you couldn’t control it. Elsie would sometimes start talking, telling a story, say, and get so carried away, piling it on so thick, flying off on so many tangents, that she might as well have been speaking in tongues. If you pointed this out to her, her response would be to clam up.
April 2012
Readers Write
The Best Feeling In The World
4 AM under the big top, a prison cat, the highest pleasure
April 2012
Quotations
Sunbeams
March 2012We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
The Sun Interview
Side Effects May Include
Christopher Lane On What’s Wrong With Modern Psychiatry
There are more than a hundred more mental disorders in the DSM today than we had in 1968, including incredible new ones such as “sibling-relational problem” and even “partner-relational problem.”
March 2012
Photography
Underneath The Armor
Four months into their seven-month tour, the mostly nineteen- and twenty-year-old marines at Patrol Base Fires in Sangin, Afghanistan, had seen enough violence to permanently line their boyish faces. Two of their platoon’s men had been killed by improvised explosive devices [IEDs], one of them blown literally in two.
March 2012Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Drag
Although I believe I know how to have fun (camping is fun), I have recently started to suspect that some people consider me a “drag.” I’ve begun to consider myself a drag, especially when I can’t take a measly half day off without my conscience bugging me.
November 2011
Subscribe & SaveSAVE 52%
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today