Writings
Ten Reasons to Pay It Forward
To pay it forward means that instead of paying someone back for a good deed, you do a good deed for someone else. Maybe you’ll surrender your first-place position in a long line at the 7-Eleven when someone behind you is in a hurry. On a rainy day, you might hand an umbrella to someone
Hanging on the Periphery: The Life of an Introvert
I’m Gary, and I’m an introvert. It’s no big deal, really, but there it is. If you know me casually, you might be surprised. Close friends, on the other hand, will probably get it. They know I can hold my own in social situations, but every now and then I have to disappear to recharge
Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason
Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature. The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove
Beethoven and the Purity of Will
“What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing! Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair. Little more, and I would have put an end to my life—it was only my art
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
Hanging on the Periphery: The Life of an Introvert
I’m Gary, and I’m an introvert. It’s no big deal, really, but there it is. If you know me casually, you might be surprised. Close friends, on the other hand, will probably get it. They know I can hold my own in social situations, but every now and then I have to disappear to recharge
Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason
Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature. The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove
Beethoven and the Purity of Will
“What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing! Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair. Little more, and I would have put an end to my life—it was only my art
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
A Bunch of Felonies
You know, that’s what my sockeyetrist told me. “Catherine,” he said, “you’ve got a person in you, another person besides you, and that person is all the time telling you, ‘Catherine, you’re no good, Catherine, you can’t do thus and that.’ And you are trying to become yourself, but that
Raymond Carver, Remembered
For those who weren’t writing back in the nineteen eighties, it’s hard to imagine what a broad shadow Raymond Carver cast across the writing world. His work, and articles about him, seemed to appear everywhere, including The Paris Review, Atlantic, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In his final year, 1988, he was inducted into the