Shadow Play

Their house was filled with books that no one read, a piano that nobody played, and paintings that nobody looked at. There was a dog that no one loved and a white picket fence that kept nobody out and held no one in. It was shadow play—all the right shapes but no substance. This poster picture of the American Dream was like a set, and they were only actors.

"Such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called "healthy-mindedness" looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them." Friedrich Nietzsche in "The Birth of Tragedy."

In Defense of Being 'Busy': A Response to “The ‘Busy’ Trap”

I’m going to go on a rant and say a lot of things that I might not totally mean if I thought about it harder. But I feel like I need to say it, especially before I leave Harvard. And maybe I’m biased, but I’ve worked in other countries, so here it is: Americans don’t know how to take a break.

Megan E. McKenzie

Social Artist and Poet Spreads Joy in the Square

In scanning the sidewalks and horizons for targets to deliver the lines to, the walkers were encouraged to truly pay attention to their presence in a social space. “You created smiles that didn’t exist before,” Cotner told the participants.

Love and the Absence of Colour

I loved you the first time we spoke. It was at your party during that black night in your gray apartment on your white couch in my black-and-white dress when I wanted nothing more than to lie in your white room on your white bed and stare at the white ceiling and make gray clouds and think black thoughts with you.

Robert

A potbellied, life-weathered man yelled things we couldn’t understand from his seat on the sand a short distance away. His beat-up leather skin had been worn by the beach like driftwood in the sun.

A Two-Minute Speech on Time

I’ve never had a big, empty stage all to myself before. It’s a big, vacant stage, really; it looks empty, but it is only artificially so. Underneath the fresh coat of paint it holds all the old dirt and holes, scratches and marks and gestures and breaths from people past. History.