The Empty Square

A View from the Cemetery

In Our Town, a young woman dies and is allowed to relive one ordinary morning — and discovers that nobody was looking. The week's threads come together around the question she asks too late, and the one we still get to answer.

Returning

A friend was sure he was terrible at meditation because his mind kept wandering. He'd quit at the exact moment the real exercise began. This one undoes a lot of shame about what presence actually is.

An Appointment with Nothing

You'd never delete a meeting with your most important client, but the hour you saved for yourself is the first thing to go. On why rest is composed, not leftover — and what a page of sheet music knows that we forgot.

Triage

The triage nurse is the calmest person in the emergency room — not because she cares less, but because she knows the difference between a fire and an alarm. A look at how to spend your attention only on what's actually burning.

The Long Exhale

Has telling someone to "calm down" ever, in the history of the world, made them calmer? This is about why you can't think your way to calm — and the one door into the body that's been on the wall the whole time.