An essay about personal reinvention, Carthusian monks, the movie “Pig,” and the importance of authenticity over shallow performance.

Memories of our family’s chickens, the soul’s freedom, Mark Helprin’s novel “Elegy in Blue,” leaving Substack, childhood birthdays, and an elegy for a lost life.

A bickering couple in San Francisco, pretending to be someone else at a cartoonist convention, Iris Murdoch on our “flat, relentless egos,” Pico Iyer on monastic retreats, and the peace of becoming yourself.

A short story about residents of a small town receiving mysterious yet uplifting letters, but then they stop. The story originally appeared in John Patrick Weiss’s 2024 book of short stories, “The Morning Fox.”

An essay about my abscessed tooth, my old dog’s dental surgery, pain and the wisdom of C. S. Lewis, Kent Haruf’s blessed McPheron brothers, the poet Rumi on pain, the suffering of Voltaire’s Candide, and a healing text from an old friend.

Elderly women, Akiko Busch and Virginia Woolf on the invisibility of older women, and why older women glow in the dark.

I drove to an old church in the town where I grew up, to visit an old friend whose mind was slipping into the fog of memory loss. And while he remembered me, he mostly repeated old memories. And on the drive home the thought, if we didn’t care, there’d be no sting of loss.

A dying grandmother, a train ride in the park, the importance of caring to stay alive inside, and how the time you give to others is never wasted.

A short story about a retired English teacher who lost her husband, family choices, a student who left the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and how despite the ups and downs of relationships, love remains.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Jones, Simone Weil, and the practice of retreat. But not because the world has nothing to offer, but to learn how to get out of your own way.

The decline of customer service, the coarsening of society, Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice to let sadness go through you, and the belief that there is still grace in the world.

A meditation on modernity, the proliferation of technology, and the sense for some that time has passed them by.

A small woman in an airport pushing a wheelchair full of luggage. Memories of a disabled boy playing softball in grade school. The recognition that everyone is carrying something. The beauty of composed serenity.

A photo essay inspired by the streets of San Francisco, a meditation on the fleeting nature of time, thoughts on street photography and the art of noticing.

A photo essay about the unseen gardens each of us tend. The winters and summers we carry within us. The places where nothing grows, and the places where the soil is rich.

A photo essays about remembering, honoring, and forgiving. About the Presidio in San Francisco, memories, and continuing to love.

A woman and child, fleeing a life that no longer works, spend the night in a casino cafe. They find kindness and hope there.

A street photography essay about people alone, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, and a return to ourselves.

A short essay about fear, and the things that hold us back from leaping into the abyss, and into a life of motion and growth.

Beautiful places and restful vacations and meeting celebrity idols may excite us, but the people who know us completely and love us anyway are who sustain us.