Browse Sections
Sy Safransky's Notebook
May 2008
The universe will let me know when I’ve worn out my welcome. Until then, why don’t I make myself at home?
May 2008April 2008
When I depend on what I know, I never get very far. As the meditation teacher Stephen Levine writes, “The mind creates an abyss, but the heart crosses it.”
April 2008February 2008
I didn’t want to go to the antiwar rally last night; I had too many things to do. But I always have too many things to do. I asked myself: Am I really too busy to exercise my right of dissent? Use it or lose it, Democracy whispered.
February 2008November 2007
My father’s parents, who lived with us throughout my childhood, fled Russia in 1905 to escape poverty and the state-sponsored massacres of Jews, called pogroms. They told me about the elation they’d felt when, after an arduous three-week ocean journey, they’d glimpsed the majestic statue in New York Harbor for the first time.
November 2007October 2007
If I sit here waiting for the perfect sentence to show up, I’ve got a long wait ahead of me. Maybe the perfect sentence doesn’t want me to wait. Maybe the perfect sentence is tired of one-night stands with writers who fall in love too easily, who can’t be trusted to stick around when the perfect sentence turns out to be not so perfect after all.
October 2007September 2007
When I try too hard to get my life into order, I forget the order that gives rise to this life — an order born of mystery, but an order nonetheless.
September 2007August 2007
Waking in the dark this morning, I’m grateful that the sun will soon be up; now, there’s something I don’t question, no matter how convincingly the light fled the night before.
August 2007July 2007
No, I don’t like demonstrations. But, to my mind, showing up for a march like this is the civic equivalent of doing the dishes or emptying the trash: the dirty, unglamorous work of living in a democracy.
July 2007June 2007
And the perfect sentence wandered through a foreign city where no one understood a word she said.
June 2007May 2007
I inadvertently stepped on my cat Nimbus in the dark this morning. I’ve already apologized, and she doesn’t appear hurt, but I feel as if I’ve started the day by invading another country. Would a jury of my peers convict me for such a careless act?
May 2007
Request a free trial, and we’ll mail you a print copy of this month’s issue. Plus you’ll get full online access — including 50 years of archives. Request A Free Issue