Last weekend I returned to my alma mater to attend a friend's graduation ceremony. Though it was a busy two days, without much of a chance to see any significant amount of the campus, it was dizzying how immediately and how naturally everything came back to me simply by being there. I've been out of …
Lunch is my favorite part of the day. On weekdays, it's a break from work and a celebration of having made it halfway through the day; on weekends, when my day often starts much later, it's the first real step into the day ahead of me and a chance to soak up the anticipation of …
Birds are fascinating. They're marvels of the animal kingdom, capable of physical and mental acrobatics that are making us reconsider what is possible. Recent studies have illuminated them as astoundingly intelligent, and they even have language, a trait that was once thought unique to humans. I personally quite enjoy birds, whether I'm reading about them …
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time… —Macbeth (5.5.19—21) The passage of time vexes us all. Macbeth had perhaps a more morbid, characteristically Shakespearean outlook than some, but he had a valid point to make: the nature of time is to …
All cultures on Earth have some form of music. Even cultures with no connection to any other group of people, virtually untouched by the modern world and independent of outside influence, have music. It has been present, as far as we can tell, throughout all of human history: some of the oldest pieces of writing …
When I first learned about the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral on Monday, my word for the week had already been chosen and this post partially written. As the news updates about the incident began pouring in, I considered choosing different word, a French one that could somehow capture all the feelings surrounding the …
Say what you will about English, but it can be used effectively if the person using it knows what they're doing. In terms of sheer vocabulary, English is simply a brute, having the largest number of distinct words of any language whose words are countable.* A large portion are stolen and pillaged, yes, and many …
I don't know about anyone else, but for me being cold is just a fact of life. I'm partly convinced that I may be the first cold-blooded human ever to be born. A breeze on an otherwise warm day is enough to make me shiver and wish I'd brought a jacket. I have the practice …
Perfection is a siren's song. It calls to us across deep and treacherous waters, its mysteriously alluring melody tempting us to pursue it, promising us greatness when we reach it. But if we follow, allowing ourselves to become blinded by the music without knowing where it may lead us, it soon becomes dangerous. It becomes …
Theoretically, spring is now upon us. I've already started to see robins, who I trust to tell me the season more than I do the calendar, and there have been a couple of days so far when it was almost warm enough to go outside without a jacket. Unfortunately, though, I live in a part …
Verbomania 