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Alternate

Before Cat and I became a couple, before we even knew each other, we were a team: knocking on strangers’ doors to bring them Barack Obama’s tidings of hope. Everyone in Brooklyn was already voting for him anyway, so they just cheered us on and thanked us for our service. There was a precoital vibe, a tingling anticipation of victory.

In The Dark

Reading Goodnight Moon to a child, cross-country skiing at noon under a full moon, gasping at the sight of the ocean awash in moonlight

The Unraveling Ties Of The Universe

When she leaves you, you’ll bleed from your nose in your sleep. This cannot be stopped. The blood will go through the sheets. It will soak deep into the fibers of the mattress, and you will sleep on this forever.

Confessions

Torn pants, a little pink toothbrush, a C-shaped scar

Conversations With A Remarkable Man

Honoring The Late James Hillman

Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.

The Best Feeling In The World

4 AM under the big top, a prison cat, the highest pleasure

Tick Tick Boom

Every few days or so, when his loneliness becomes impossible to bear, Rodrigo leaves his Manhattan high school and goes to Central Park. He wanders off the paved roads and makes his way to the secluded, wooded trails, just a few blocks from the housing project in Harlem where he grew up. There he drifts and waits. He might lean against a tree or roam along a trail. Eventually a man will show up.

A Castle In Outer Space

There was a flutter in my rib cage, a somersault of uneasiness. I hadn’t witnessed such concentrated weirdness up close since my parents were alive: my father’s conspiracy theories and colon-cleansing elixirs; my mother’s ground-up lithium in a locket around her neck.