Christopher Brunt
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
In my research following Leibniz and Spinoza as their paths cross and then diverge, I became interested more broadly in the failure of the Enlightenment to extinguish the things it’s meant to have extinguished: superstition and religious bigotry, tribalism and barbarity, feudalistic economies and stupid, evil, mass death. Their world, on the cusp of a new modernity, begins to look more like ours than not: the post-Westphalian order giving rise to the nation-state and with it, bellicose nationalism, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade birthing global capitalism and the system of racial hierarchy that persists today in its wake.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
This Having-a-Baby is proving harder than I remembered. In part because it is harder the second time around. Because I am not wise, I had expected the opposite to be the case. I had thought, we already have the tools, the knowledge, the expertise. We have been to Troy in our black ships, looted its treasure, burned it to the ground. We know from diaper changes, projectile spit-ups at four A.M., teeth-cutting, growth spurts, high fevers. We know not to leave the stroller on the porch overnight or else it gets that weird green mold. The second baby would slot right into this operation, a seamless addition to the good world we’ve made.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
Here is what I know: becoming a parent made me a better writer; being a better writer made me a better parent. Now, as the number of children in my household doubles, I expect this positive relationship between the life-crafts of parenting and writing to extend and increase proportionally over time. I also expect severe financial stress. Lastly, I expect it’ll probably all work out somehow.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
I thought they were zany, quippy, tender, uproariously profane. In the crosstalk and hubbub, in the backstories of these women I would learn later from my colleagues, in the atmosphere of the prison itself, there were suggestions of brutal violence. In other words, it was exactly like Orange is the New Black.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
If you’ve never been a young person on a big campaign, it’s hard to convey how thrilling the atmosphere is—part cult, part war, with stolen intervals of shore-leave. It went on for six months, through a January run-off, and it was a euphoric experience.
An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.
To remember your death is to know a powerful clarifying truth: this ain’t no dress rehearsal. My favorite Stoic, Epictetus, suggests we teach our children this as we tuck them in bed each night. “What harm is it,” asks Epictetus, with a straight face, “just when you are kissing your little child, to say: Tomorrow you will die?” To which I think, have you ever met a child?
