Issue 358 | The Sun Magazine

October 2005

Readers Write

Self-Control

Spending the entire night together, being very brave, stitching yourself to reality

By Our Readers
Sy Safransky's Notebook

October 2005

“We can’t forget,” my friend C. said. “Forgetting what happened to the people of New Orleans will exact too high a price. We can’t just send off a check, and cry again over the images, and pretend there’s nothing left for us to do.”

By Sy Safransky
Quotations

Sunbeams

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Henry David Thoreau

The Sun Interview

The Blessing Is Next To The Wound

A Conversation With Hector Aristizábal About Torture And Transformation

For a long time, during the dirty war in Colombia, when my friends were being shot dead all around me, my goal was just to survive. But after I was tortured, my goal changed. It was not just to survive, but to live a meaningful life. Sometimes, in the ordeal, we find the seeds of our identity.

By Diane Lefer
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Trying

Recently samples of baby products — diapers, formula, wipes — have begun showing up in my mail. Packets of coupons with smiling infants on them arrive in envelopes that say, “Congratulations!” in big red letters.

By Thea Sullivan
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Heart Of Darkness

My mother-in-law is writing a memoir about my husband’s life. Robb died in 1997, of a heart attack, at the age of thirty-seven. Many deaths are unexpected, but his felt especially so, as no particular reason emerged for why this healthy man would wake up one morning and have a heart attack.

By Leslie Pietrzyk
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Irving

In the small Nebraska town where I live, I am known as “the cook.” People I don’t know will often stare at me fuzzily for a moment before a flash of recognition lights their face: “Hey, I know you. You’re the cook.” Which is reasonable enough, I suppose, since I am the cook at the Olde Main Street Inn, the chief dinner house in town. It isn’t exactly what I’ve dreamed of being all my life, however. To be honest, being the cook is an unwanted byproduct of my efforts to be “the writer.”

By Poe Ballantine
Fiction

Maggie Fever

I turned slow circles in the night, raked with chills, unsure which door would open. I thought of bolting off. Then I began to savor the moment, this tiny half-beat interlude before Maggie and I came face to face. It was like being perched at a swing’s highest backward point, waiting to rush the air.

By Davy Rothbart