Tag: Wisdom

• March 5, 2012

  On walking home from school

  I said, “If ever I have a girl, I would like to name her Marilynne. Wouldn’t that be something?” She said, “I think it would be something if you could name a daughter Marilynne.” I must have been 8 years old when I first started walking home from school. That would have put me in…
• March 1, 2012

  Friends as fellow travelers; or, the art of saying farewell

  The following is a spiritual exercise (ascesis) in the art of saying farewell. The former friend whom I’m addressing in the letter has an extensive background in music, physics, and philosophy, has a prestigious academic pedigree, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. We first met only days after I moved to NYC, a…
• January 27, 2012

  On first words, last lines, and final thoughts

  It was while lying in bed beneath the flowered sheets that I’d read to her the opening line of Mrs. Dalloway and we’d loved. “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” And it was while lying on the grass beside the northern spring lake that she’d read, less enthusiastically, the opening lines of To…
• January 4, 2012

  ‘The nature of a good marriage is actually very simple’

  “Call no man blessed until he has died.” –Solon For about a year, I’ve been having weekly conversations over email with an older man. We’ve been talking about living and dying, literature and philosophy, ethics and science. He’s become someone whom I admire. During a recent exchanged, I asked him about the nature of a…
• January 3, 2012

  Seneca on our overindulgent habits of reading

  It may be time to rest after a day of writing like mad about Jane Austen. For me, Austen is hard. She flees from me, is overdemanding, is so smart that I can’t keep up. Every time I try to do her justice, I fail. I take some time away from her. In about a…