During the First Indochina War, reporters filed stories using cable, and each word cost money, so it made sense to condense Viet Nam, Ha Noi, Sai Gon, and other names. But those days are long gone. Using the correct spelling is more than courtesy; it lets us see the place fresh, as a country with a rich history and culture, not a war we lost.
There is tremendous loneliness in free will and its consequences, in deciding to play a certain game and then defining what it means to win or lose.
Like feisty academics or a team of investigative reporters, philosophers work together to solve problems, but as they do, they challenge and oppose each other, oppose the orthodoxy, in order to reach a new synthesis.
All the driver says is “I’m on my way,” and I grin, not caring how long it takes. Cocky now, I open both windows all the way. Nobody should have to be scared. Yet humans have always had to be scared.
My father was there, the photograph says to me directly. But he was also not there. Not only not visible in the photograph—which, taken from the wing, shows no hunched shoulder or flying cap to indicate the person pressing the firing button—but not there at all. Concentrating, yes; in fear for his life, yes. Supremely there, of course, while the shipboard German gunners sprayed flak at him and he dropped his powerful twin-engine airplane into a dive. But also absent, in a reverie.
Orgasm is a little more specific than laughter, which is definitely contagious. But both topple the boundaries, letting us inside the mind and body of another human being. As we listen, we, too, lose a little of our habitual control.
Luxury matched its dictionary definition: “the state of great comfort and extravagant living.”Now, guided by social media, ads, fashion magazines, and influencers, we grab at the tiniest extravagance.
In the slog of cleaning out the most intimate possessions of someone you loved, you remember who they were, what habits anchored them, what delighted them, what mattered to them.
The construction of two new bridges to replace an existing bridge joining Illinois and Missouri, on the north edge of St. Louis, is midwifed by expertise, daring, and trudging drudgery.
Spidery, creeping, impossible to ignore, anxiety spins uncertainties that cling no matter how frantically we brush them away.