Sublime

she can’t help feeling that her will to be seen taking part is not matched by her actual desire to do so. She used to rage, to get involved with direct action and instigate chaos, but her anger has waned over time, the way laughter eventually becomes forced, and what is left feels unpleasant but nonetheless easier. Isla used to say that Irene’s

This state of affairs goes beyond compassion fatigue. Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain

When I felt off, it was my fault, a sign of some internal weakness, a lack of moral fiber, a crack running through the integrity of my being. “It is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped,” Sontag writes. Indeed: despite all my efforts to think

reneged

The thought was disquieting—that our identities should be so mutable, and therefore the course of our lives.