A precocious ten-year-old boy searches for the meaning of life. - photo credit: Aaron Burden

A poem that was written indoors during quarantine while craving movies, travel, fine dining and the great outdoors. - photo credit: Joshua Hoehne

Emotions are simply the clothes that we wear. They are not flesh. On his last day, my father slept, and did not wake up. I heard his lungs fight for air.

The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition. (Malcom Gladwell, The New Yorker, October 13, 2008)

Perhaps it is true that the idea of this world as a great mountain that reaches above the clouds, pinched from subterranean plates of earth and rock, can sustain itself on symbolism alone.

Tomorrow will not remember today, except that we command it to do so. Yet, I have never been one to deify the past. photo credit: Gabriel Gabriel

I yield the remainder of my time to the youngster who speaks, without irony, for an entire generation. Photo credit: @laimannung

From the wake of distress and self-deprecation emerges a peculiar treasure: spiritual nudity.