When I was in my twenties, toward the end of a not-especially-dissolute but nonetheless untethered youth, there was a period of a few months when I spent a lot of time with a man who had been the big local rock DJ when I was in high school. He had moved into my threadbare downtown…

The other day it was raining. The clouds were impossibly low, skimming the tops of buildings as they scuttled across eastern Michigan on their way to somewhere nice. The rain fell not so much as drops but as a fine, coating mist that moistened rather than drenched. A pack of stray dogs picked their way…

You might stumble into a lengthy life through no particular fault of your own. You might, as well, find yourself in a situation of relative comfort and ease without ever exactly earning it. And who could blame you for it? Such things happen to people now and again. But what if it isn’t that important…

My old friend Gina, one of the loveliest ladies I know, lived for years with her family in a large co-op apartment overlooking Riverside Drive in New York City. The building, on its lower floors, was like a wedding cake swathed in white icing, but once you made it through the dark Gothic lobby and…

  “It is easier to survive a category five hurricane than it is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.” That paraphrase of Walker Percy (from his essay, “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise”) was suggested to me by my friend Caroline Langston Jarboe. I was wondering out loud why I would give anything to have back…

In Kyoto, Japan, seventeenth-century Nijo Castle contains an architectural feature meant to protect the ruling shogun. The floors in the inner most chambers are constructed in such a way that the nails rub together when trod upon, creating the acoustical effect of chirping birds. Known as “nightingale floors,” the sound acts an alarm, providing a warning…

Now spring has come again, the season that’s best for hope. Post-Lenten promises are fresh as a baby’s breathing, and the failures that eventually spoil them are as far away as the height of summer’s heat. Hope can make us believe in endings as well as beginnings, in the idea that we can accomplish the…