Bloomsbury Publishing

Time off can feel impossible and is a luxury that many cannot afford. But can you find ten minutes to give yourself and start from there? Can you gift yourself thirty minutes of quiet time, to turn away from the world and tune into yourself to see what happens, without scrolling on your phone?

I longed to enter the fraternity of the artist: the hunger, their manner of dress, their process and prayers.

After all that hearing, he writes, “I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail.” That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.

I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again

“Forever is composed of nows,” she says.

“Light,” I said, “the visible reminder of Invisible Light.”

that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses

And she seems to have responded very darkly to what is finally a very optimistic poem. The poem is about our connectedness—each of us sharing the same root system like leaves of grass.”

“I tramp a perpetual journey,”