The language I teach you won’t obliterate wordless thought but leave space for silence and sensation. It counts, categorizes, but also wonders at wild, uncountable, unnamable things. We’ll send each other messages ripe with meaning, gradually growing a shared comprehension, and all talk stops when we encounter the incomprehensible. Let’s not fill in the blanks; […]
Naomi Steinberg
Posted inArts + Scene
Falling
From plum trees pink petals fall as redwood sorrel sings a song of spring and trillium prepare to perform their seven-year ritual of breaking hearts with the force of beauty. Far away young soldiers fall and are covered with snow as Europe wakes from a seven-decade dream hearts blown to bits flowers refusing to bloom. […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Elegy for Jolie
For twenty foolish years I walked right past them, on my way through the woods to the river, assuming I was seeing all there was to be seen. Then one early spring, in the cool, deep wet of the redwood forest, Jolie came to visit. She opened my eyes to hidden wonder along the trail: […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Having been discharged from Hell
Having been discharged from Hell, the New York dead lie piled inside refrigerated trucks, awaiting their transport to Heaven and reunion with old enemies and friends. A continent away, the redwood forest throbs with life, as prehistoric ferns unfurl, and tiny wildflowers become droplets of courageous color in the shade of the big, dark trees. […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Let’s Talk About It: Be Concerned
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of opinion pieces solicited by the Journal. In the immediate aftermath of Nov. 8, it became very clear that people need safe spaces to discuss their ideas and feelings, and generally process what was the ugliest and most vitriolic presidential contest in generations. To that end, we […]