Bewilderment

Bewilderment

Over the run of eighty minutes, I tried to convey to a coven of twenty-one-year-olds with a wide spectrum of intellectual abilities just how absurd it was for everything to spring up out of nothing. The alignment of favorable circumstances for the emergence of...
Sisters

Sisters

The house burbles around us. The water chokes out of the tap. She doesn’t catch our eyes. She washes and then passes things to me and I dry them and then give them to September to put in the cupboard. I want to tell Mum how we’re sorry, really sorry, about what...
Case Study

Case Study

I continued to pass my evenings in the parlour, but I had grown impatient with the drivel I read. There seemed no reason why I could not do better, or at least have a stab at doing so. I began to write little sketches of the characters I encountered at work. Then for...
New Power

New Power

Since the advent of the internet we’ve seen a huge new wave of joining, affiliation, and participation, though not on the terms Putnam (Bowling Alone) was seeking. New power loves to affiliate, but affiliation in this new mindset is much less enduring. People...
My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Although I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what’s happened to me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for...