Altered States https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us My Bowstring Heart On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28969 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-my-bowstring-heart 605-38-yeomans-preview.jpg 605 - Yeomans - Whitmore Bars On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28959 Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/604-bars 604-32-law-preview.jpg 604 - Thomas Law - Bars The Night I Don't Remember It doesn’t matter how many AA meetings you go to. As long as you are taking oxycodone and oxymorphone, you’re going to be high, and, as long as you have complex regional pain syndrome, you’re going to be taking something serious for the pain.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28941 Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/603-the-night-i-dont-remember 603-27-kim-preview.jpg 603 - Kim - Ruddick Sunbeams

I went out to the kitchen to make coffee—yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The lifeblood of tired men.

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28901 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-sunbeams 601-49-povenz-preview.jpg 601 - Povenz - Sunbeams The Danish Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28898 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-the-danish 601-40-began-preview.jpg 601 - Beban - Sparrow Radar and Revelation I don’t interpret UFO phenomena literally. I can’t help but see the moral anxiety and end-of-the-world panic expressed by them. But that doesn’t mean I think these encounters don’t happen.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28839 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/598-radar-and-revelation 598-4-Gross-preview.jpg 598-Gross-Askey Nectar It was an old tradition he had once told her about: When there was a death in the household, the beekeeper would go out to tell the bees about it. The thought was that, if the bees were not told, they would abscond. They were members of the family. Their feelings would be hurt if they were overlooked.

So he was doing it. Telling them. Romantic fool.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28714 Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/591-nectar 591-14-bronsan-preview.jpg 591-Brosnan-Wood Athens, Revised Perhaps you know where this is going, or think you do. I do not. I decide the man is just being hospitable, like all the Greeks I’ve met during my ten days traveling through the country. As we disembark from the ferry, he says he is a father, recently divorced, and was raised in Athens, where his mother still lives. He is on his way there to visit her.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28533 Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/584-athens-revised 584-24-druart-preview.jpg 584 - Druart - Wood This Month In <em>Sun</em> History Sitting with his first wife, Judy, and a friend on a sunny beach in Algeciras, Spain, Sy Safransky embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately led him to create the magazine you now hold in your hand. In March 1970, for the first time, he placed a tab of LSD on his tongue. He was twenty-five years old.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24887 Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24887-this-month-in-em-sun-em-history Drug Experiences Mushrooms in the desert, pot on a family vacation, black hash on a nuclear submarine

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22304 Tue, 28 Feb 2023 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22304-drug-experiences Dad Calls To Tell Me michaelmark3@gmail.com he used the Amazonian jujitsu death / grip to choke out the pharmacist / who wouldn’t give him his heart medication / until tomorrow — which, he admits, is when / it’s actually scheduled for pickup.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25676 Wed, 30 Nov 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25676-dad-calls-to-tell-me In Vino Veritas What if . . . our taste for alcohol has been strengthened and preserved in our gene pool for functional reasons? Then we might look at intoxication not as a side note but as part of the story of what makes us human.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26393 Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26393-in-vino-veritas Four Poems From Ancient China Call next door, ask / neighbors on the west if they can spare / any wine, and suddenly a jarful comes / across the fence — fresh, unfiltered. We / open mats beside Meandering River’s / long currents, crystalline winds arrive, / and you’re startled it’s already autumn.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24461 Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24461-four-poems-from-ancient-china Memory: Short-Term Loss, Long-Term Gain I am not so sure it is “we” who look back. The commemorating imagination seems to come alive on its own. We are not the sole instigators of remembering; memory seems to push itself on us.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22280 Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22280-memory-short-term-loss-long-term-gain On Time Music is simply decorated time.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22535 Thu, 28 Oct 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22535-on-time Sunbeams

Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.

Richard Neville

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22529 Thu, 24 Jun 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22529-sunbeams Mr. X The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25798 Thu, 24 Jun 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25798-mr-x Parting The Clouds All the data so far suggest that a single treatment, or two treatments, with psychedelics can relieve depression for an extended period, because the psychedelics cause the patient to see the world differently.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27294 Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27294-parting-the-clouds On Becoming A Cat Please understand: the external metamorphosis comes only at the very end, after a long, sustained effort. There is a lot of inner work you have to do before then. Also there is luck involved.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25444 Sat, 01 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25444-on-becoming-a-cat Sunbeams

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Iris Murdoch

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21481 Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21481-sunbeams November 2017 Featuring Pico Iyer, Starhawk, Sister Joan Chittister, Sparrow, Sy Safransky, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24908 Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24908-november-2017 From Here To Eternity I was outside of time. Awe, glory, and gratitude are the only words for what I experienced.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25603 Wed, 01 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25603-from-here-to-eternity Long-Distance Relationship November 12
I saw you on the street today, staring at me, smiling in front of the red sky at sunset. I don’t know what you were doing there, what business ghosts might have to attend to, but thanks for showing up. You don’t know how precious a few seconds on the sidewalk can be until they’re gone.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23446 Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:02:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23446-long-distance-relationship <em>excerpted from</em> <br />Who Dies? Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23020 Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23020-em-excerpted-from-em-br-who-dies Imogene’s Prayer sybil.smith7@gmail.com The pills are about the size of a bing-cherry pit in diameter and are a faint green color, like the eggs of some songbirds. On one side they have a deeply inscribed SZ, on the other, the number 789. They are Ritalin, the ten-milligram kind. Imogene knows them by sight because occasionally patients admitted to the psychiatric ward where she works as a nurse have containers of assorted pills, and she has learned to spot the ones that will get her high.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22096 Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22096-imogene-s-prayer 458 - Pfingston - Smith Learning To Sleep You’re not really exhausted until the hallucinations start: Droplets of mercury floated in my peripheral vision. A lemon levitated out of the fruit bowl. A streetlight at the corner of State and Garfield laid its long body down on the sidewalk. The cat looked up at me from the corner of my desk, twitched his muzzle, and said, “Libby, Libby, Libby.”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24172 Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24172-learning-to-sleep Essay In Which My Uncle Eddy And I Attend His Funeral I want to ask Uncle Eddy how it could possibly be that he is sitting in my car as we drive through Katonah, New York, on the way to Danbury, but sometimes in life you just roll with what’s happening and try to make sense of it after it happens.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23917 Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23917-essay-in-which-my-uncle-eddy-and-i-attend-his-funeral <em>excerpted from</em><br />Ten Conversations At Once The Dalai Lama climbed the ladder and entered the dome of this same Great Hum. Already five others had seated themselves. One of these was a highly developed lama who could sing three notes at once, each note carrying a different conversation. Another could carry on two conversations, and the other three could carry on only one. This meant that eight conversations were already taking place. Since the Dalai Lama could carry on two, his arrival completed the number of visitors allowed, and he closed the door after him.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27982 Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27982-em-excerpted-from-em-br-ten-conversations-at-once Honoring Aggression In your society, and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23527 Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23527-honoring-aggression The Magic Of Macy’s I am nineteen, standing behind the Coach / counter at Macy’s Herald Square. / This feels like my first real job: I take / a bus to the city; I wear a suit; / I ask strangers if I can help them, / even though I actually can’t help them, / since I know so little about leather goods.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25126 Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25126-the-magic-of-macy-s