A Place To Land

There is a sentence we say to people who are suffering, and we say it with the best of intentions. Be strong. Hold on. It sounds like advice. It isn't. It's a request, and almost always a request not to have to hold anything ourselves.

The new essay starts there and ends up somewhere unexpected: the deck of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, where migrating birds sometimes land after flying for more hours than a body can stand. The ship doesn't save them or take them anywhere. It offers a firm surface for as long as landing is the only thing that matters. It's very little, and for the bird it is everything.

It's an essay about the hug that asks nothing and answers nothing, about the people who go on being a place to land after decades and an ocean in between, and about what arrives, diminished and late, through a screen.

Read the full essay: [link]