Male Cerulean Warbler, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, and Lark Bunting, for Tonelli et al. 2023. Magnetic field disruptions lead migratory birds astray. Always a delight to contribute illustrations to papers like this one! Big thanks to Morgan Tingley for requesting these.
Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine / Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh / Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone / Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me / Kitty Stryker, “Radical Self-Reliance” Is Killing People. / Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, From my Life I Write to You in Your Life
I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.
I’m lonely. What kind of loneliness? Every kind. I feel disconnected. Abandoned. As always. Repetition. So what, my love? So what? At first, I just wanted to run away. Now I have no where else to run to, nothing to run from. I don’t belong anywhere, I don’t want to go anywhere, I just want to be happy.
(1) Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (2) Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life (3) Daniela Fischerová, Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (4) Wisława Szymborska, tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, from “The Railroad Station”, Map: Collected and Last Poems (5) Daul Kim (6) Sarah Kay, from “The Paradox”, No Matter the Wreckage
Clarice Lispector, tr. by Stefan Tobler, Água Viva / George Sand, in a letter to Gustave Flaubert, August 1871 / Czeslaw Milosz, tr. by E.M. Cioran, from “Letter”, August 1963