Phoenix of Love

I was thinking about photosynthesis recently, and what a bizarre and amazing concept it is. A plant takes the sunlight that is already shining on it and uses it to create energy for itself. Then animals eat the plant, and other animals eat the animals, and the energy from the sun is passed on and [...]

We are always underestimating the importance of our surroundings. I’ve found that I have to constantly remind myself to give them the attention they deserve, or else I will neglect them and eventually be dragged down by the results of that neglect.
Most often when I have a sudden burst of concern for my environment, I [...]

Don’t worry; there are no bananas hurtling through the air. This is one of the classic examples of “garden path sentences”—sentences that make you do a double-take because your interpretation of the grammar changes halfway through. They make a sudden, unexpected turn, apparently rather like paths in a garden. In this case, you think we’re [...]

Different cultures have different ways of “handing over the floor” to the next person in a conversation. In some cultures, people basically interrupt all the time, and whoever can talk louder gets the next turn. In others, there are long pauses between when one person finishes talking and when the next begins. In the U.S. [...]

You may remember that a while back there was quite a stir about huge numbers of bees absconding from their hives and vanishing. Well, I’ve determined conclusively where they’ve all gone and why. Today I was eating lunch with a coworker at a sandwich shop, and as I was polishing off the last corner of [...]

Neck tension is annoyingly difficult to get rid of. I carry enormous amounts of tension in my neck and shoulders, even when I’m otherwise quite relaxed. It’s painful and can also make me look uncomfortable for no particular reason. You’d think that lying down and taking the load off of your shoulders would release the [...]

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of amor fati—love of fate; love of the way things are. I was thinking recently that loving another person is the closest we can come to the relationship we have with the world itself. Ultimately, the only way you can survive loving someone is to love their sheer [...]

An article I once read claimed that most Americans are two paychecks away from bankruptcy. In other words, if the typical American missed two paychecks, they would be scraping the bottom of the piggy bank. Recently I was thinking of this, and it occurred to me that this could be true of people’s social lives [...]

This word makes up a surprisingly large chunk of the material of everyday conversation. Once in a while it catches my attention and I’m shocked at how disjointed and bumpy my sentences sound and how many “hedging phrases” like “well,” “kind of,” “I guess,” “you know,” “like,” and “um” poke out from the gaps between [...]