Activity

That weekend, Jamie and I went camping. He had been in the office all month—no fieldwork—and said he wanted to get outdoors. I wasn’t sure that car camping counted, but it was the best we could do, so we drove to a campground, set up our tent on a pre-groomed square of dirt, built a fire in the pre…

“I’ll finish my dissertation,” I said. I had spent so many years working up an argument that the mind was all that mattered. But I had been wrong about that, too. The body was undeniable. I was surprised to find that the idea of going back to the unfinished document on my computer made me excited. …

We entered a vast windowless space, seemingly a ballroom, though who would want to host a ball in this windowless space was a mystery. The room was filled with hundreds of booths, each with a table and a sign, a salesperson or two shilling product that was at least tangentially related to happiness…

I heard his footsteps retreating down the hallway, down the stairs. I lifted the next item out of the box, a gray wool skirt suit. The fabric felt soft and luxe, a subtle pinstripe running top to bottom. But when I held up the matching jacket, I could tell that something about it was no longer righ…