I read A Confederacy of Dunces years ago and thought it was hilarious. Now I think it’s prophetic. Back then, Ignatius J. Reilly felt like an exaggerated character. He is a pompous, self-righteous, overeducated man ranting about society’s collapse while blaming his digestive system for everything. Today he […]
There is a small monkey in Japan who briefly broke the internet because he coped with loneliness the way many of us secretly do: he found something soft and held on tight. Punch, a young monkey at Ichikawa Zoo, was spotted clinging to a plush toy for comfort […]
There are people who cry at weddings. People who cry at movies. People who cry at tax season. I cry at dog stories. A heroic dog.A rescued dog.A dog reunited with its human.A dog wearing a tiny raincoat. I am emotionally available for all of it. So when […]
Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, humans went from inventing tools to naming them. Not in a practical way. Not in a “this is my truck, Bessie” kind of way. No. We are now giving delivery robots faces, personalities, and apparently emotional backstories. Little sidewalk robots are trundling around […]
This weekend I began spring cleaning, not because I am virtuous or organized or suddenly one of those people who labels their spices. No. I started cleaning because my brain was full. Overfull. Like a Manhattan closet. Like my inbox. Like my emotional support tote bag that contains […]
Scientists recently thawed bacteria trapped in ice for something like thirteen thousand years inside Scărișoara Cave in Romania, which is already the kind of sentence that makes me feel like humanity is poking at something that should have stayed in a locked narrative box labeled Do Not Disturb. […]
Lately the news has felt like a slow drumbeat of mortality. You see familiar faces. People you grew up watching, people who seemed woven into the background of your life and suddenly their names are trending next to words like illness, cancer, ALS, loss. You see names like […]
New York City is powered by three things (1) caffeine, (2) rent anxiety, and (3) people who wake up each morning and think, “You know what? I bet I can pull this off.” Enter one man, one night’s stay, and the absolutely majestic idea that if you play […]
New York City is many things at 2:30 a.m. Romantic if you’re in love. Philosophical if you’re walking home alone. Regret-adjacent if you’ve just eaten pizza you didn’t need. But every once in a while, it turns cinematic. A few nights ago, a man apparently launched himself into […]
OK. Here’s my thing today.This is not my lane.This was my spouse’s lane.Three years ago, if you had asked me about extraterrestrials, I would have handed the microphone to EsoterX and gone back to writing about trauma, attachment, and why people overshare in elevators. But lately? The universe […]
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