These Precious Days: Essays

Tavia and I operate off a common hard drive: she remembers half and I remember half.

My ideas about what constitutes beauty and culture and art are continually expanding.

I think that this is the major conundrum for me, whether to devote myself to the public good or personal growth. I’m not sure why they seem so separate but they

I would give them the ability both to love and not to care.

For her it was all about taking a giant step backwards, back to her childhood and her happiest memories of following her grandmother in the garden, back to sitting in the dirt surrounded by zinnias. She had managed to peel off other people’s expectations in order to see what a life that was entirely her own would look like. It looked like the natur

“All you have to do,” he tells me, “is give a little bit of understanding to the possibility that life might not have been fair.” The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfort

I’ve always had the impulse to protect myself, but somewhere along the way I got confused about what I needed protection from.

I suspect this is to remind us of the holiness of the ephemeral: we’re always so busy looking towards (for) the eternal.

The trick is in the decision to wake up every morning and meet the world again with love. I have