Before the Gym: Forgotten Body-Movement Arts of the Old World
I have a confession. I find gyms a little strange. The fluorescent lights, the low grunt of effort punctuated by the clang of metal, the […]
I have a confession. I find gyms a little strange. The fluorescent lights, the low grunt of effort punctuated by the clang of metal, the […]
The narrative of female economic power has, for the most part, followed a familiar and celebratory script. We laud the “girlboss” scaling the corporate ladder, […]
It happens in a garage on a Saturday morning. Two friends, let’s call them Mark and David, are running on an antique bike. For lengthy […]
It’s a quiet afternoon in a park in Xi’an, not a long way from the silent, imposing terracotta military guarding China’s first emperor. But right […]
I actually have a small, worn-out cardboard shield at the top of my closet. Inside are the physical fragments of my past: a bundle of […]
I take into account standing on a cliffside as a toddler, the salt spray stinging my face, watching a gull dangle immobile in the air. […]
I don’t forget the load of the coin in my small hand. It turned into a Saturday morning, and the air in the open-air marketplace […]
We learn that history is narrative. It is the master tale spun from chronicles, carved into stone, written in textbooks, and saved in national archives. […]
We inhabit an age of colossal solutions. We’re advised to repair our mental well-being with a radical new diet, a 90-minute-a-day meditation routine, an online […]
We are familiar with the four pillars of a typical review. We discuss plot—the events in order, the “what” of the thing. We break down […]
We walk through a forest and see trees. We gaze across a prairie and see grass. We look at a coral reef and see a […]
There’s a world that exists just beyond the edges of our daylight perception. As we retreat indoors, drawing, there’s a world that lies just beyond […]
We walk through forests, gaze across meadows, paddle through wetlands, and often we see… scenery. A backdrop to our human dramas. But below the rustling […]
Forget the marble halls and tailored suits for a moment. Step outside. Listen to the sunrise refrain not as birdsong, but as a complex community […]
We spend lifetimes building walls. Walls of ordinariness, of ambition, of cautiously built identities. We polish the veneer of control, convincing ourselves the world bends […]
The jungle doesn’t sleep. Ever. At dawn, a howler monkey’s roar shatters the mist—a primal alarm clock for creatures below. Somewhere, a leaf quivers, not […]