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I began to photograph trees. My attention was particularly drawn to the ways they had accommodated themselves to the urban environment, or the ways they had been pressed into making such accommodation. Everything in tree life, I came to feel, was a negotiation made visible. On many more trees than …

Flattery! It was so long since anyone had flattered him. So long! His wife had kicked him out six months ago. Lonely, grim months. Such solitude. It was unbearable. Longing all week to see his kids, then this desperate panic all the time he was with them, trying to make it wonderful, to eke out eve…

The next night, Ally was reading her doll-maker book. Occasionally she pressed a hand to her heart, overcome. Russell had brought Thora a magazine from town, but she’d seen it already. A page of various celebrities with cellulite blurring their thighs. A different celebrity recording everything she…

Thora was on Focalin. Or had been, until they found out she had been snorting it off James’s iPad, the iPad he loaded with podcasts about political crimes and interviews with precocious teens starting businesses. She’d tried listening to one of them once, one of James’s beloved podcasts: when had l…

Spiritual art must always be in flux because it represents a greater mystery, also in flux: man’s relationship to the Holy. In each age the spectator grasps for that special form, that spot on the spectrum, whether in art, religion, or philosophy, which can take him to the greater mystery. At prese…