The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

Paris, June 1937Guernica is hanging at the Spanish Pavilion of the International Exposition on the Champ de Mars. I stood in front of it for two hours today. I have been in enough wars to have personal reference points for what this painting documents.Picasso has not...
The Feast That Is Never Satisfied

The Feast That Is Never Satisfied

Florence, 1474, and presentRinaldo was not an evil man in any simple sense. He was a man who had learned, within the institution that raised him, that certain things were his by right of his position: the deference of everyone below him in the hierarchy, the right to...
Performing Darkness vs. Living Inside It

Performing Darkness vs. Living Inside It

Venice, October 1817Byron arrived in this city last year and has been consuming it at the rate of a man who suspects he has a limited amount of time. We were introduced at a salon on the Giudecca three weeks ago. He is the most exhausting person I have met in fifty...
The General’s Words and the Five Centuries Behind Them

The General’s Words and the Five Centuries Behind Them

Present Day, June 26, 2026A United States military commander recently described the current conflict in the Persian Gulf as a holy war intended to bring about the second coming of Christ. He said this to the people he commands: the people who will carry out the...
The Journals Speak Almost Entirely in Metaphor

The Journals Speak Almost Entirely in Metaphor

Himalayas, March 1508The pass above Nako is at four thousand meters and the air is thin enough that thinking requires effort. I have been in these mountains for three years. The monasteries receive me without excessive questions. The monks here are accustomed to the...
What the Grief Actually Is

What the Grief Actually Is

Present Day, June 23, 2026I Am Crying requires some explanation because grief is a word that gets used loosely and what I mean by it is specific.Ordinary grief has a trajectory. It is sharpest at the moment of loss and then, for most people, it softens over time into...