Sy Safransky
Sy Safransky is founder and editor emeritus of The Sun. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
April 2002
I’m a year older than President Bush. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t seem like much of a father figure to me. Or maybe he’s as much of a father figure as this foolish nation deserves. Nearly everyone is behind him now.
April 2002March 2002
Is it possible to live each day knowing that everything will go wrong — that everything is falling apart right now — yet remembering, too, that this in no way denies the living truth, the love at the heart of existence?
March 2002February 2002
I don’t have an American flag on my car or my front door. But I’m more of a patriot than Attorney General John Ashcroft, who studies the U.S. constitution as if it were a menu in a fashionable Washington, D.C., restaurant from which he’s free to pick and choose.
February 2002January 2002
War: Such an easy word to utter. One syllable. It slices the air like a sword.
January 2002December 2001
What shall I pray for now? The triumph of good over evil? A better year for American business? Shall I pray to have more faith in George W. Bush than I did when he stole the election? I don’t want to be fighting a war against terrorism. I want everything to be the way it was before. Give me back the War on Poverty. Hell, give me back the War on Drugs.
December 2001November 2001
If we could ask the people who died in the attacks what to do now, I wonder what they would say. Wouldn’t we want to take time to listen to all their voices? Voices of rage. Voices of sorrow. Voices of compassion. Voices of hate. Voices that say, Do something. Voices that say, Don’t do something stupid.
November 2001October 2001
I realized that this is what so often happens when we come face to face with some unimaginable horror: we run for help, but no one believes us. No one believes how many species are disappearing, how many prisoners are being tortured, how many women are being broken by self-important men.
October 2001September 2001
One way to love myself is to stand still when sadness comes sweeping in like a storm. This means not judging the storm, and not condemning myself for getting drenched; three-quarters of the world is covered in water.
September 2001August 2001
It’s important to recognize my imperfections; it’s also important to stop pretending I’m less than I am. This morning, I woke up suffused with a love no words can describe. But in a few minutes, I was reaching for my dog-eared script, already forgetting the radiance that had permeated my being.
August 2001July 2001
The Titantic is split in two; it sinks. That’s the story of the Titanic. That’s my story, too, hitting the same iceberg again and again, and never quite believing it.
July 2001
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