Milo arrived first. Readers will already know he is handsome in a way that suggests both vanity and sorrow. Since the breakup, he had been dressing better. It’s one of the oldest male rituals—losing love and buying a jacket.

Adrian was ten minutes late, which for him meant exactly on time according to a private system no one else understood. He entered carrying two books, a thermos, and an expression which already disagreed with three strangers internally.

“You look thinner,” said Adrian.

“You look diagnosed,” said Milo.

They embraced.

Milo slid some printed material across the table. “The New Yorker article on masculinity camps I told you about. Men crawling through mud and carrying rocks of shame. Fathers paying nine hundred dollars so their sons can be yelled at by someone else.”

“I read it.” Adrian still scanned the material. “Ritualized suffering with premium pricing,” he mused.

“They call it becoming alpha.”

“Nothing says alpha like trying to fit in.”

“Haha. Liberals mock this,” said Milo. “But what if the right wingers are responding to something real? What if they are actually having a masculinity crisis?”

Adrian removed his glasses and cleaned them with the grave tenderness of a man resetting civilization.

“Pain can be real,” he said. “The explanation of pain is often stupid.”

“That’s very you.”

“It’s probably why I remain unmarried.”

Milo leaned back. “Look, progressive men like us—”

“Speak for yourself politically.”

“You vote left.”

“I vote against embarrassment, wherever that might come from.”

“Fine. Men like us. We don’t sit around worrying if we’re man enough. We have careers, books, music, therapy, opinions about a recent film. Have you seen Michael? It’s better than I thought it might be. Anyway, maybe masculinity matters less once you have other identities.”

Adrian nodded slowly skipping the reference to the weekend’s new “it” movie. “There’s something in that. If you can say ‘I am a composer,’ ‘I am a scientist,’ ‘I am a teacher,’ ‘I am a person who bakes superior focaccia,’ then ‘I am a man’ doesn’t need to carry that whole burden . . . of what . . . that whole burden of selfhood. It’s actually the Right who has become obsessed with gender. They’re panicking that it didn’t mean what they thought it did. It’s been tied up with a lot of other things for them. For one, power in their country.”

“Exactly.”

“But.”

“There’s always a but with you.”

“But group identities do not disappear just because educated people get bored with them. They remain powerful where work is more physical, where communities are tighter, where symbolic language matters more.”

Milo stirred his coffee. “So the electrician gets masculinity where the curator gets taste.”

“Mmmm. Crude, but yes.” Adrian turned back to the article.

“These camps fascinate me less as politics than as unmet need. Look—grief, loneliness, no close friends, fathers wanting to do better than their fathers, men unable to speak until someone hands them a sandbag and shouts nearby. It’s just everyday pain. There’s nothing new here.”

“You sound sympathetic.”

“I am sympathetic. I am not sympathetic to the branding. Alpha. Beta. Sovereign male. This is a new marketer’s naming for the soul.”

Milo stared out the window. “My cousin went to one of these things,” he said.

Adrian looked up. “You never mentioned him.”

“I don’t mention him because he thinks I’m what happened to America.”

“Family!”

“He works in HVAC outside Boise. He’s a good guy. Reliable. Coaches Little League. But after his divorce he got deep into podcasts. Telling me things like ‘modern men have been neutered by comfort.’ He went to a weekend retreat. Came back talking about discipline, brotherhood, cold plunges, and not apologizing.”

“Did it help?”

Milo paused.

“For six months, yes. He quit drinking. If that is good. . . . lost some weight. Talked to his wife more. Then he started posting shirtless advice videos with captions like PAIN is the RENT for GREATNESS.”

Adrian winced. “Recovery often takes a theatrical phase.”

“You joke, I think he was hungry for something else.”

Outside, a cyclist in yellow glided through the rain like a banana.

Adrian spoke more softly now.

“Modern life stripped many rites of passage. No village notices that you are becoming a man. No elder names your strengths. No task proves anything except that you can do payroll. So people are buying a script.”

Milo blinked. “That’s almost beautiful, man.”

“I’m capable of accidental beauty.”

“Haha. So are progressive men missing something?”

Adrian considered.

“Yes and no.”

“Not a promising answer.”

“We are right to reject domination, emotional illiteracy, cruelty disguised as stoicism, the cult of never apologizing. But in rejecting bad masculinity, some men reject any aspirational masculinity at all.”

“Aspirational masculinity. Meaning?”

“Strength in service. Competence under pressure. Protection without possessiveness. Humor in hardship. Responsibility freely chosen. Loyalty. The ability to build and endure.”

Milo smiled. “You’ve been reading the Romans again.”

“I contain multitudes . . and their footnotes.”

Milo’s face changed then, some shadow returning. “When my ex left,” he said quietly, “I realized how much of my confidence was relational. I thought I was this evolved modern man beyond gender scripts. Then suddenly I wanted absurd things.”

“What things?”

“To fix shelves. To grow a beard. To be called dependable. To carry groceries into the house in one trip.”

Adrian nodded as if hearing lab results. “A breakup often reveals hidden metaphysics.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Milo laughed despite himself. “I wanted to feel… solid.”

“Bodies matter. Social expectations matter. Boys are treated in certain ways. Men are invited and punished in certain ways. Gender is not fiction, only badly written when turned into a slogan.”

Milo pointed at him. “That should be on your tombstone.”

Adrian ignored this. “You once told me I seem autistic.”

“I said spectrum-adjacent.”

“Which is now how baristas describe everyone who alphabetizes their drinks.”

Milo grinned. “Fair. Do you do that?”

Adrian folded his hands. “I never understood masculinity as a tribe. I understand it as a performance I might be failing. Other boys grasped rules intuitively—banter, ranking, aggression turned up just so. I learned these things analytically, late, and with poor user experience.”

Milo stared. “You’ve never said that.”

“No one asked.”

“And now?”

“Now I think many so-called masculine traits are simply human capacities coded male by hindsight. Directness. Courage. Technical obsession. Protective instinct. Emotional reserve. Some healthy, some unhealthy, all contingent.”

“But about the actual biology?

Adrian shrugged.

“Biology matters, certainly. Strength matters. Sex differences matter. Hormones matter. But biology gives tendencies, not a dress code. It can explain why men are, on average, larger than women. It cannot explain why a real man must grill outdoors, fear therapy, or own three identical pickup trucks. Nature loads the gun and culture fires it.”

So you don’t feel outside masculinity?”

“I feel outside marketing.”

They both laughed.

A server arrived with pastries no one had ordered. This was the sort of place that occasionally gifted fennel.

Milo tore off a piece.

“So what do we do with men who say they’re in crisis?”

“We believe the suffering without automatically believing the ideology.”

“That’s pretty good. Your responses are always so glib. You’re a typical materialist. You know, that’s why they hated Obama.”

“Speaking about masculinity. So, how about better rituals?”

“Such as?”

“Mentorship. Team sports without humiliation. Trade apprenticeships. Men’s groups without cosplay. Art. Service projects. Community choirs. Milo nearly spit out coffee.

“Community choirs as masculinity intervention.”

“Yes. Nothing is more secure than singing tenor in Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion beside strangers.”

This led to companionable silence.

Finally Milo said, “Do you think conservatives are just clinging to old forms while progressives embrace change? You know . . . the old story?”

Adrian shrugged. “Sometimes. But sometimes conservatives preserve goods progressives neglect, and progressives liberate people from goods that had become cages. Politics is often a two error-correcting system that often insults each other.”

“That may be your most centrist statement.”

“It’s not centrist. It’s tragic.”

The rain came down heavier on the window. Milo gathered the article.

“So no alpha camp for us?”

Adrian stood, adjusting his coat. “My dear Milo, we are going to rehearsal, then to dinner where we will discuss literature and later flirt badly with whoever is there.”

“That’s your model of masculinity?”

“That’s my model of civilization.”

They were sitting in the garden outside his studio, where the box elder maple was burning up in flame. A thin light sliced through the clouds and carved the world into abstract shapes and color as if insistence from the Voice of Existence, “Stop and Behold!” His sister wore a wool scarf, which she now felt too warm for mid-October. She tugged it tighter as if to defend herself from what he might say.

“How do you paint the autumn air?” he replied. “That cool feeling that condenses all of summer, like a fine Riesling. Obviously winemakers can do it. Or the hint of the coming Christmas fire? I could paint each of those, yes. But how do I paint that one thing we’re feeling in the air? I cannot capture what I feel. A fine Riesling is the best I know. Am I just ready for a drink?”

His sister, Marta, was used to such pronouncements. She had grown up hearing her brother’s metaphors before he even knew what they were—back when he would describe the color of her blue dress as the summer sky. There was a heaviness to him now that she couldn’t quite name.

“That’s the challenge. . . . Gustav, people still love your paintings,” she said. “The dealers are still calling. You’ve given the world beauty. What more—”

“Beauty,” he interrupted. “Yes, that’s what they call it. But beauty belongs to the world, not to the canvas. Every time I paint now, I feel as if I am stealing something alive and stabbing it to death. It’s like embalming a song. I can no longer commit this murder, this theft.”

Marta frowned.

“Aren’t those metaphors a little over the top?” she asked. “Are you aiming to be a writer now?”

She was accustomed to his ambition masking as defeat.

“Oh, come Marta! You know what I’m talking about. Don't play dumb.”

She had spent her life teaching literature to high schoolers, where beauty had to be explained.

“But isn’t art always a kind of theft?” she asked. “We take something fleeting and make it last.”

“That’s what I used to think,” Gustav said. “But lately I’ve begun to wonder whether permanence isn’t the enemy of truth. The air tonight: it lives because it passes. If I caught it, it would die in the act of being painted. Talk to biologists today, and they’ll tell you life is a process. This business of sequencing the genome and loading it up to a file. It’s not telling us very much.”

The wind lifted leaves from the ground, swirling them in a last dance of summer. Marta watched them settle again. “You sound like Dad,” she said finally. “He used to say the apples ripen without asking permission.”

Gustav smiled. “Yes. Dear old Dad!”

Thoughts of their father had stirred him to his feet. He looked toward his easel, standing back through the open doorway of the studio. The canvas was mostly blank, but the palette underneath was daubed with ochres and pale violets, as if he had begun and given up right away.

“I once believed,” he said, “that painting was a way of knowing. That to see was to understand—to get the whole picture, that whole feeling—immediately. A Gesamtkunswerk. The whole thing. But lately, I feel that seeing blinds me. The more I look, the less I really know. The world doesn’t want to be translated. Why should we insist? Just for our egos?”

“You’re talking like a philosopher again,” Marta said with a half-smile. “Since when did painters envy philosophers?”

He shook his head. “It’s the other way around, I think. The philosophers envy us. They build palaces out of thought, but the moment they step outside, the wind tears them down. But I’ve been trying to build a windproof thought with paint. It can’t be done.”

Marta leaned back and studied him. His once-steady hands stained of ultramarine, crimson, and yellow now rested on his hips. He was fifty-one, known for landscapes that shimmered between realism and quiet abstractions—the way early morning mist makes the ordinary look eternal. Critics called him “the painter of fragmented light.” She knew that he no longer cared about all that.

“Maybe,” she said softly, “you don’t need to capture it anymore. Maybe it’s enough that you’ve done it already.”

She was trying a new direction.

Gustav’s eyes were fixed on the maple tree now. “Perhaps,” he murmured. “Or perhaps what I’m painting now has no canvas.”

The garden grew quiet except for the rustle of the small family of quails beyond the oak brush. Marta thought of all the years he had painted. Each canvas had been a kind of diary, a record not of the world but of how he had been in it.

They sat, and the air changed again. The faintest shift, as if the earth exhaled. Gustav closed his eyes and smiled. “There,” he said, “did you get that? The world just turned a page.”

And Marta, though she didn’t understand him fully, nodded. The painter was still painting—only now, the world itself was his brush.

Later, after Gustav had gone inside, Marta lingered among the fall leaves. The air had cooled further, that fine Riesling crispness he’d spoken of. She could smell the cold meeting the sun-warmed earth.

For a long time she sat without moving. She thought of her brother as he once was—his hands always in motion. He couldn’t be stopped. He used to come home with smudges of cadmium yellow on his collar, humming to himself, always chasing light. Now he spoke of surrender and the futility of permanence. It frightened her a little.

When the light had almost gone entirely, she stood and went into his studio.

In late dusk the room smelled only of the painter and the possibilities. She could taste his paintings—she could hear them. What joy they had given her! On the walls leaned canvases from decades of work: the lavender dusk over San Francisco’s Sunset District, the apple orchard at the mouth of Zion Canyon in full bloom, the self-portrait painted on his forty-fifth birthday where his eyes seemed both weary and fertile.

Then she saw the last one.

It stood behind the easel where he had left it several mornings ago, the one he had said he couldn’t finish. At first it had appeared to her blank, but on seeing it closer she saw it glowing faintly in the dimness. She stepped closer. It was almost nothing, a specter.

And yet it didn’t vanish. The more she looked, the more it seemed to breathe. Shadows from the garden trembled across it. For an instant, she thought she could see the very air itself—the coolness, the melancholy, the living transience he had tried to describe.

She teared up and stayed there for a long time, watching the invisible become visible. Did he not see what she saw? It was no longer a painting. It was the threshold from seeing to feeling.

Back in the house, she found him sitting by the fire, his eyes closed. The flames wove light across his face, a genuflection, a benediction.

“I went into the studio,” she said softly. “And I saw your last canvas.”

He didn’t open his eyes. “And?”

“It isn’t blank.”

A slow smile touched his mouth. “No,” he said. “The air is never blank.”

They sat together in silence. The fire crackled. Outside, a string trio of crickets bade farewell to summer.

Marta thought of her students and how she had tried to teach them that poems were not things to be explained but moments to be lived through one’s life.

When she rose to leave, he said quietly, “Tomorrow, if the wind changes, I may begin again.”

But Marta knew he already had.

He loved the nation.

Or was it the stage on which he played leader of the nation? This is a subtle distinction, and we will not burden him with it.

Each morning he awoke with a crisis already being formed in his chest. It could be about borders. It could be about taxes. It could be about wars. It could be about a word someone used in 1997. The specifics do not matter. What mattered was the actual giving birth to the conflict. It just felt right.

By nine o’clock a.m. the Politician would step before a microphone — his favorite of all inventions — and announce that something was at stake. Usually civilization. Sometimes gas prices. Sometimes dinner. He had an instinct for stakes.

The crisis today was small. It lived mostly in him. It was like a melody hummed in the shower or on the toilet.

Across town, in a building made of glass and anxiety, there worked the Journalist.

The Journalist adored the truth. Except when money and the market was involved. He also had a hard time with long term relationships.

Or was it his own selection and fine arrangement of facts the Journalist most preferred? He had a great talent for lining them up in a kind of beautiful way and sometimes even exotic and surprising way.

Anyway, this is a subtle distinction, and we will not burden him with it either.

The Journalist rose early in the morning as well. He refreshed his coffee and fed on social media. He listened for that hum, just that right buzz.

And there it was — the Politician’s melody, drifting across the interwebs.

A melody alone is nothing. It requires harmony and rhythm. It requires someone to say, This is important. The Journalist was very good at importance. Actually, the Journalist didn’t need the truth. He had newspapers and television.

The Journalist would gather experts, opponents, historians, psychologists, even actors and comedians. He would line them up like a choir and give them the Politician’s tune and say, “Tonight, we ask: Can you all sing what this means to you?”

The Poltician’s crisis, at this point, was now mature. Several Journalists were orchestrating it. It had lower thirds. It had drums. The introduction was turning into a full overture.

The Politician watched and listened.

He would tilt his head slightly, like a composer sitting in the empty hall hearing his symphony played by a full orchestra in rehearsal. The strings were better than he imagined. The timpani especially. He had only supplied a four note melody, but here was a work of art.

He would then edit a note here and there, and make a comment about the violas.

The Journalist, being conscientious, would supply new richness on demand.

The Politican would say, “Everything is at risk.”

The Journalist would reply, “Panel, let’s examine whether everything is at risk.”

The Politician would say, “The experts are corrupt.”

The Journalist invited more experts.

The Politican would accuse the press of hysteria.

The Journalist would host a panel on media hysteria.

They were absolutely devoted to one another.

It would be unfair to say they were both cynical creatures. After all, they drove elections and the nation’s history. They were quite often sincere.

The Politician truly believed he was defending something fragile and magnificent. The Journalist truly believed he was defending something fragile and magnificent. They simply disagreed about what the fragile and magnificent thing was.

The Politician believed it was the nation’s soul.

The Journalist believed it was the facts. What is soul when facts are at stake?

The universe is full of facts, the Politician would say. And I have the best ones, the Journalist retorted.

There were evenings — rare, but not out of the question — when the Journalist considered silence. What if he did not amplify the day’s emergency? What if he covered instead the zoning board? The bridge across town?

On those evenings, the Politician would feel a faint loneliness. He would announce a crisis and hear only his echo.

It unsettled him. But silence was difficult to sustain.

The public must have its show. They had, after all, bought tickets.

Both could be a bit dramatic. Which is how they ran into each other that night.

They met in a public but still private toilet in the Politician’s residence. They were both escaping from “a situation.” The politician from a Senator and the Journalist from . . another Senator. “You twist my words,” the Politician told the Journalist washing his hands.

“I don’t need to,” replied the Journalist laughing mockingly.

“And you,” said the Politician, drying his hands slowly, “used to call me at night.”

The Journalist met his eyes in the mirror, just for a second too long.
“Off the record,” he said, softer now.

“You always preferred it that way,” the Politician replied.

A pause.

“You liked being heard,” the Journalist said. “Even then.”

“And you liked deciding what it meant.”

Their shoulders nearly touched at the sink. Neither moved.

“You were a woman then,” said the Politician looking at him directly in the mirror.

“And you were a real man . . . We were good,” the Journalist said.

The Politician smiled faintly. “We still are.”

They stood there a moment longer, both reflecting back, slightly editing the story in their minds, and then . . .

And then, because history is merciless and life interesting, the door opened and the Philosopher walked in and caught them kissing.

He stopped only briefly. Not in shock. More in the manner of a man discovering that the room he had hoped would be empty was, in fact, occupied by the governing class.

“Oh,” said the Philosopher. “Please. Don’t mind me. I didn’t see anything.”

He moved toward the urinal with the grave dignity of an incel.

“It’s nice, actually,” he added, unzipping. “To know there is still love in the world. Lord knows I’m not getting any.”

The Politician scowled, “you can’t say anything.”

The Philosopher glanced over. “About what?”

“About this.”

The Journalist looked physically ill, which for a journalist is saying something.

The Politician lowered his voice. “I’ve survived every scandal in the world, But this—” he gestured helplessly. “This would finish me. I’m the king of scandal,” he added, rather sadly. “But not this kind.”

The Philosopher nodded as if considering whether he’d have the chicken or the fish tonight.

“What are you offering?”

The Politician blinked. “A job. Money. Power. Influence.”

“What kind of job?”

“Chairman of the National Bioethics Committee.”

The Philosopher continued urinating. “At least Secretary of Defense,” the Philosopher insisted. “That’s the only serious job in your cabinet.”

The Politician considered it. “That can be arranged.”

“Look,” said the Journalist now able to speak, “you can’t say anything. I’ll lose everything.”

The Philosopher zipped up and turned toward them both.

“A Journalist’s name,” he said, “is indeed all he has. Which is unfortunate, because it is usually attached to a publication owned by a hedge fund.”

The Philosopher washed his hands.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m interested in the good of society, not merely in a good story.”

The Politician exhaled. The Journalist farted.

“But,” said the Philosopher, reaching for a paper towel, “I do want one thing or the story is out there. CNN, FOX News, Right Wing Influencers on YouTube.”

They waited.

“Quit being run around by the market.”

The Philosopher decided on the chicken as he exited.

This is not corruption, exactly. Nor is it purity. It is collaboration. Like love, it is sustained by misunderstanding and admiration.

Unlike the bird, the Politician needs his early morning melody to fall on someone’s ears.

And, also like the bird, the Journalist needs something to hear to begin his day.

The Philosopher claims he’s after wisdom—but only after Five O’clock!

Each morning in the capital city, the melody begins again.

Sapere aude—dare to know.

There is something bracing about a modern debate in an old college hall. Students and professors showing off their knowledge of language and the issues—usually political ones. One recent Thursday evening the auditorium at Suffolk Hall at Winthrop College was filled to capacity. This time it was two senior professors debating. The theology students had come early. The business majors late. The donors arrived right on time and sat in the middle, where history tends to unfold most comfortably.

A banner hung above the stage:

THE CHARTER OAK DEBATES
Modern American Religion Is Abandoning Metaphysics

The moderator—a political science professor who described himself as “spiritually adjacent”—welcomed everyone and reminded the audience that applause was permitted, but exorcisms were not.

At stage right stood Dr. Jesse Petersen, professor of systematic theology. At stage left, Dr. Daniel Harris, philosopher of science and professional dismantler of sacred cows.

Opening Statements

“Let me reassure everyone,” Dr. Harris began, “I am not here to abolish religion. That department has its own committees.”

Nervous laughter and more coughing and settling in.

“For centuries, Christianity made robust claims about reality. God exists. Truth is objective. Moral law binds all persons. These were not culture-war slogans. They were ontological commitments.”

She paused.

“My claim tonight is not that Christianity is false. My claim is that a significant strand of modern American religion is abandoning metaphysics in favor of narrative sovereignty.”

She defined the phrase carefully.

“Narrative sovereignty is the belief that controlling the story—legally, culturally, politically, rhetorically—is equivalent to securing the truth.”

She continued:

“When pastors declare from pulpits that America is a Christian nation not as a theological aspiration but as an unquestionable historical fact, or when institutional leaders argue that demographic or cultural majority proves moral legitimacy, we are no longer debating metaphysics.”

“The focus shifts from ‘Is it true?’ to ‘Will it win?’”

A burst of applause.

“When repetition becomes proof,” Harris concluded, “we have left the Summa Theologica and entered the algorithm.”

A few laughs, but not from the techies.

Dr. Petersen stood.

“I appreciate the algorithm reference,” he said. “The angels are still debating whether it is big enough to dance on it.”

A few in the room relaxed.

“But religion has always cared about civilization,” he continued. “Augustine wrote about cities. Aquinas advised princes. The church has never been allergic to power.”

He allowed a small smile on his face, as though he had practiced it.

“If religion avoided politics entirely, it would own fewer stocks and even fewer souls.”

Laughter—donors included.

“When religious leaders defend traditional moral claims in the public square, they may do so clumsily. But engagement does not equal abandonment.”

He raised a finger.

“Christians still claim moral truth is objective. They still affirm that God transcends the state. They still insist that reality is not manufactured by majority vote.”

He concluded:

“Hypocrisy, if present, is a moral failure. It is not proof that metaphysics has packed its bags and headed to Las Vegas.”

Second Round

Dr. Harris softened his tone this time.

“If metaphysics remains intact,” he asked, “why is this distortion increasingly acceptable?”

The question lingered.

“When pastors excuse dishonesty because it protects the unborn or when institutions justify misleading claims because they defend religious liberty—or, how about this, when civilizational rhetoric flirts with racial hierarchy under the banner of heritage . . .”

The air thickened.

“Truth becomes instrumental. It becomes valuable insofar as it serves the cause.”

He lowered his voice.

“Let’s be honest and question whether the American right today is interested in the truth. In metaphysics, truth is sacred because it corresponds to reality. In post-truth religion, truth is sacred because it secures survival.”

A silence.

“That is the shift.”

Dr. Petersen rose without humor now.

“My colleague is right about one thing,” he began. “There are pastors who speak too confidently about history. There are institutions that lean too eagerly into civilizational rhetoric. And there are believers who excuse what should not be excused. Any time on YouTube will reveal that.”

He did not rush.

“But let us examine the evidence more broadly.”

He ticked off examples without looking at notes.

“There are evangelical seminaries where evolutionary biology is openly taught and debated, not feared. There are Christian bioethicists engaging CRISPR and AI with metaphysical seriousness. There are theologians publishing on natural law in dialogue with secular philosophers. There are churches defending religious liberty not to dominate, but to preserve pluralism.”

A few heads nodded. Then even some claps.

“There are believers who opposed political falsehoods even when it cost them congregants. There are denominations splitting precisely because some refused to instrumentalize truth. There are Christian legal scholars defending constitutional limits on their own power.”

He paused.

“These are not the actions of a movement that has abandoned metaphysics. These are the growing pains of a tradition wrestling with modernity.”

“Exactly,” interrupted Dr. Harris.

“Please, it’s my turn.” His voice steadied further.

“If some religious leaders treat power as validation, they are not expressing Christian metaphysics. They are betraying it. The metaphysical claim remains: truth is grounded in reality, not in dominance.”

He leaned slightly forward.

“The cure,” he added, “is not to abandon religion but to return to its claim that truth answers to something beyond us.”

Closing Statements

Eventually, the debate wound toward an end.

“I’m afraid Dr. Petersen has been left behind. Modern American religion stands at a pivotal moment,” Dr. Harris said.

“It can double down on narrative sovereignty—believing that institutional strength secures moral truth. Or it can return to metaphysical seriousness—risking marginalization in a pluralistic age.”

He now smiled.

“If God is real, He does not need narrative reinforcement. If truth is objective, it does not require strategic editing.”

His final line:

“The tragedy would not be that religion is wrong. The tragedy would be that it stopped caring whether it is.”

Dr. Petersen rose slowly, folded his notes. He seemed less defensive now, more from the heart.

“If some religious leaders—as we have seen today—treat power as validation, they are not expressing Christian metaphysics. They are betraying it. The metaphysical claim remains: truth is grounded in reality, not in dominance.”

He leaned slightly forward.

“The danger is real. But so is the corrective.”

Silence.

“Religion does not become postmodern because some believers confuse victory with truth. It becomes postmodern only if it decides that victory equals truth.”

He allowed the words to settle.

“And if that day comes—I will consent to Dr. Harris—if Christians truly believe that reality bends to repetition, then they will have disproven their own doctrine. Which would be a remarkably metaphysical way to lose a culture war.”

He gave a faint smile. “I don’t think that is the case today.“

“A tradition does not cease to be metaphysical because some of its adherents behave tribally. By that measure, every university, newsroom, and political party in America would have surrendered epistemology long ago.”

Some cheers.

“The question is not whether religious people are tempted by narrative power. Of course they are. The question is whether their central claims still assert a reality that does not bend to their will.”

He paused deliberately.

“Christian metaphysics says this: if we lie, reality does not adjust. If we distort, God does not revise Himself. If we repeat a claim loudly enough, it does not become true.”

He looked across the room.

“I’m aware that this is the view of the President of the United States. And I’m aware that many of his supporters are religious. The claim about truth may be ignored. It may be betrayed. But it remains.”

The final line came, dry and precise:

“If narrative sovereignty truly governed Christianity, we would have edited “sin” out centuries ago.”

A hush.

“But we didn’t.”

Silence — then sustained applause.

Dr. Harris won the debate based on a vote before and after. But, characteristically, reality did not vote.

Outside, the quad hummed with talk of nightlife and ontology. One journalist for the school paper was drafting an op-ed in his head. A theology professor quietly texted some lines to himself.

The bells of the campus chapel rang on schedule.

Across the lawn, the glass and steel biology building stood somewhat out of place in this old college, and perhaps a bit defiantly.

Neither building adjusted its position.

The composer is in love with the student.

The student is in love with the music.

So the composer writes a sonata.

The first movement is sweet. His friends say it sounds ominous, even funereal, but this is simply because they misunderstand sweetness. This is not the sweetness of desserts or engagements or children running across the room. This is sweetness that knows it will not survive the lessons with the student. Sweetness already in mourning for itself. A sweetness that says, This will never happen again, even as it is happening. But oh, to see her lovely hands on the keys.

The second movement is more direct. The melody fits perfectly with the words,
”will you be my wife?”

The third movement is joyful and written in a minor key, which the composer finds perfectly reasonable. Joy, after all, rarely arrives without a footnote. The music leaps and dances, delighted with its own energy, while quietly acknowledging that the situation has already been decided elsewhere.

The student refuses him.

She does so kindly, which is to say, conclusively. She gives reasons. Reasons are the sharpest instruments we have, he thinks. The composer is destroyed in the appropriate fashion: dramatically at first, then sincerely, then privately. His friends intervene, as friends do, proposing travel.

There is a festival in the countryside. Festivals are where city and country people go to get drunk together.

At the first country dance, the composer meets a peasant girl. She does not symbolize anything. She dances. This is enough. The composer’s heart panics—it recognizes the pattern—but the body, which has no patience for philosophy, keeps moving. Step, turn, bow. He survives without even asking himself how he would live with a country girl.

The next morning by the river there is champagne and pâté, which no one questions. Juicy figs are split open right in front of the sun. Shoes are abandoned. Someone says something profound and immediately forgets it. The composer feels himself returning to circulation, like a limb that had been asleep. He announces that he is healed and has just begun another sonata.

This one is about country things and the smallest of things. About the pleasure of not having to explain oneself. He now regards the Vienna episode with relief. Marriage, he concludes, would have cost him this feeling—this delicious sense of being unavailable.

At night there is a masked ball. Musical chairs is set to a brilliant composition with a walking bass line in a minor key, too thoughtful for the game, which makes it ideal. The peasant girl lands in his lap more than once. He laughs. He stands. He bows. He refuses love with practiced elegance. The music becomes the second movement of his new sonata.

Later, near the fountain at town’s center, his friends drink more and grow eloquent. One climbs the stone rim and delivers a speech to the goddess of the night, praising her beauty and requesting her company immediately. The speech is ridiculous, sincere, and universally admired. It is forgotten within minutes.

The composer decides it must be preserved. It becomes the third movement.

Earlier, by the river, the composer read aloud a letter he had written to the student. It now sounds excessive hanging out in the moonlit town square. Overheated. A friend observes, helpfully, that all communication is satire—that it always circles reality, exaggerates it, and arrives too late! The composer asks whether music does the same. Whether music, too, is a kind of elegant avoidance. No! they all reply as two of them jump into the fountain and begin singing.

The next morning, the composer returns to Vienna, alone. The countryside outside the carriage window appears still to be dancing, which he takes as reassurance. He believes, sincerely, that everything will be fine after his headache subsides. The city appears.

His heart dips. Tears arrive without consultation. Is this really his life? Is he to repeat this cycle indefinitely—desire, expression, refusal, recovery, composition?

The dog—whose name was Pippin—had developed a sensitivity to noises, objects, concepts, and the passage of time. The mail slot caused panic. So did Leonard’s voice. Also silence. Leonard, who worked in “strategy,” initially assumed he would solve Pippin’s problems. Just like he did of his ex.

After all, Leonard himself had a standing relationship with three therapists, one meditation app, and an emergency bottle of propranolol he described as “mostly symbolic.”

The veterinarian was sympathetic. The dog was anxious, she said, but not unusually so. What was unusual was that Leonard expected a creature descended from wolves to tolerate city living, vacuum cleaners, and his emotional need to be seen as a good person.

They started with fluoxetine.

This did not help, but it did clarify things.

Soon Pippin was on a rotating regimen that Leonard described using words usually reserved for foreign policy: “targeted,” “responsive,” “adaptive.” Leonard learned to grind pills into peanut butter and sneak it to the dog. The dog, meanwhile, began staring at walls like a cat. Maybe I should get a cat, said Leonard aloud to his dog.

But then, he thought, this is exactly why he didn’t get a cat. Each time the vet reassured Leonard—It’s not you—Leonard felt a profound sense of relief, followed by the vague disappointment that the problem had not been him in a way he could optimize.

Leonard went online to find studies on dog anxiety. Surely this is a problem for everyone, he thought. We live in a material universe, and science will always have the answer. Then he joined an online group. The group did not ask whether the dogs were anxious. The dogs were anxious. That part was settled. The real question was dosage. Also supplements. Also whether anxiety in dogs should be treated holistically, pharmacologically, or narratively.

One woman explained that her dog suffered from “anticipatory urination abandonment stress,” which manifested whenever she went to the bathroom without him. She cited the study.

Leonard wondered if dogs had always been like this or were liberals ruining them. The group assured him that dogs were always this way. What had changed was awareness. And square footage. And leash laws. And the fact that dogs were no longer allowed to simply disappear for eight hours and return muddy but fulfilled.

Pippin, for his part, had begun to improve. Or perhaps Leonard had. It was hard to tell. The dog barked less, though when he did bark it felt more meaningful, as though he had considered whether it was worth it.

Leonard asked the vet if dogs might be absorbing human anxiety the way wonderful houseplants absorbed carbon dioxide.

The vet paused. Then she said something Leonard would repeat to friends at dinner parties, lowering his voice slightly, as if quoting scripture.

“What we’re really treating,” she said, “is the relationship.”

This made sense. Everything was relational now.

At home, Pippin slept more. Leonard took this as progress. When Pippin failed to greet him with enthusiasm one evening, Leonard worried the medication might be dulling his personality. He googled “dog authenticity” and immediately closed the tab.

Sometimes Leonard imagined a different arrangement. A dog with a yard. A dog with other dogs. A dog allowed to bark, dig, and occasionally terrify the neighborhood without it being a referendum on anyone’s character.

But then Pippin would look at him—soft-eyed, chemically soothed—and Leonard would feel the familiar relief.

Leonard refilled Pippin’s prescription this morning.

He stood at the window, shirt unbuttoned, sniffing a 20 year old port. The glass was his reality now. He held it handsomely as if posing for the cover of one of his albums. She lay on her belly on the bed, head up and forward in her black dress. Her feet were up without her shoes. The hotel refrigerator hum was unhurried and even pleasant.

“You played as though. . . I don’t know,” she said. “Almost like you weren’t there. What happens in your mind when you play?” Her feet continued to tease each other in the air as though they were playing an imagined keyboard.

He smiled without turning. “You asked that last time. I don’t . . . know.”

She laughed softly. “That’s why I ask. It’s like a painter saying he doesn’t know what color is.”

He sat down beside her on the bed. His skin smelled faintly of sweat and the detergent of his white shirt. “Maybe it’s not knowing. Maybe it’s forgetting myself,” he said. “When I play, I forget the self—well, not exactly, but there is free range of access to memory, emotion, pictures, abstract thoughts. But, yes, come to think of it, the self is there.”

“That kind of forgetting is a kind of knowing too,” she said. “Is it knowing how to forget? I’ve been reading that paper you mentioned. The one about the internal and the external. The philosopher says that there is no internal. All of that . . . emotion, memory, and so forth . . . can be explained externally by all the causal forces. Is that what you do? You make what’s inside audible and external?”

He lay back on the bed. The ceiling fan moved in lazy circles. “No,” he said. “I don’t make it audible. I make it physical. That’s different.”

“How?”

He sat again just to take another sip and let the liquid rest on his tongue. “The sound doesn’t come from my thoughts.” He lay back again. “It’s the other way around. The sound is what lets me think.”

She stretched beside him, her head resting on his arm. “What about when you’re practicing, do the notes just flow in?”

“They come in, yes—but not passively. They enter like guests who must be greeted properly or they’ll leave offended. You can’t just let them wash over you. Each note has to find its place, its weight, its meaning in your fingers. You invite it in, you give it shape—active and passive.”

She traced the back of his hand with her finger. “So you’re hosting the notes. They come into the mind, and then what?”

“Then I forget them again,” he said leaning back again. He had almost kissed her. “When I practice, I learn them like a language—grammar, syntax, all of it. But when I perform, that all dissolves. It’s a kind of trust. They’re old familiar friends you don’t have to think too much about.” He was tired, but enjoyed her questions.

“That sounds like faith.”

He thought for a moment. “Yes. But not religious faith. It’s bodily faith. The fingers remember better than the mind. And it’s not only faith. It’s knowledge—the primitive kind where with perception we become what we perceive, if only for a moment. Music is a constant flow of moments. Hold on and it will be gone.”

“That sounds paradoxical,” she insisted.

He rolled onto his other side then back again. “It’s not paradox. That sounds like paralysis. It’s creation that feels like discovery.”

She smiled. “You contradict yourself beautifully.”

He shrugged. “It’s late.”

They lay there in silence. The sea swooshed below, rhythmic and unhurried. Somewhere down the promenade a car passed, its headlights flaring briefly against the wall.

She whispered, “Do you ever think about me when you play?”

“You?”

“Yes. Me. Well, us. Anything outside the music.”

He was quiet for a long time. “Sometimes, yes. I think about all of my life. But not the way you mean. It’s not like I think about my life—it’s that my life and the music mingle into something new. The music reveals my life to me. A phrase might feel like childhood, or the way you smell when you first come out of the shower, and it’s only then that I realize what that memory or smell is to me. But it’s not thinking—it’s just recognition of a texture, a contour. And letting go. Or not. Haha.”

“So the mind isn’t separate from the body?”

“Never,” he said. “When I practice, I think about my hands. Their warmth, their tension. I think about gravity and the wrist. Thought is physical. That’s the scandal, if you want one.”

He kissed her on the lips briefly, and ever so softly—pianissimo.

“Does that make sense? My thoughts could be impacted by this moment with you. The port.” A line crept into his forehead.

She looked toward the open window. The air smelled of bay laurel. She stayed focused. “So maybe this new philosopher is right. Maybe there’s no real internal—it can all be causally explained externally. It was never inside to begin with.”

He smiled. “Or maybe it’s both. The mind is like this room. It has a window and a door. Sound comes in, light comes in. But without walls, nothing would resonate. You need the enclosure.”

She laughed softly. “You sound like Heidegger.”

“God forbid.”

She rolled on top of him, her hair brushing his face. “No, you do. You make music into a kind of dwelling. Dasein at the keyboard.”

“I suppose.” He ran a hand down her back, feeling the curve of her spine, the faint tremor of muscles in his fingers that had not yet forgotten the concert hall. “But we can’t live in that dwelling all the time.”

“Would that be so terrible?” she asked.

He kissed her shoulder repeatedly. “Yes. Someone has to turn on the lights, pay for the piano tuning, buy the polish.”

She laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

“What do you mean? Hopelessly empirical?” he asked. “That’s the pianist’s curse. Every truth passes through the fingers.”

She sat up, her dress pulling further off her shoulder. “Tell me one more thing,” she said. “When you play—really play, not practice—what happens to time?”

He stared at the ceiling fan. “It thickens,” he said. “Like honey. Each moment holds the next inside it. You could live there forever, but only by dying a little each time.”

She searched, now, deep into his eyes.

He looked at her. The lamplight caressed her features.

“Maybe consciousness is like that too. Always oscillating between presence and loss,” she said, pulling the pin out of her hair.

The waves were steady now, as though the sea itself were performing.

She looked at his hands remembering how they’d hovered over the keys that evening, not commanding but listening, drawing out phrases like whispers overheard. She’d seen something in his face then, not ecstasy exactly, but a kind of concentration that seemed to be his disappearance. It was that absence she both loved and feared: the man she lost to the music and who, when he returned, seemed older each time, as though the act of playing had cost him something irretrievable.

He turned toward her. “You’re thinking too much,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“What are you thinking?”

“That when you play, you go somewhere I can’t follow.”

He touched her cheek. “That’s not true. You’re in it too. Every phrase I play, you’re there. You’re part of the gravity that holds it together.”

She smiled faintly. “That’s just a lover’s lie.”

“A necessary one.”

He switched off the lamp. Through the window they could see the dark silhouette of the laurel trees.

After a silence, she said, “Do you ever wish you’d chosen another life? Something easier?”

“No. Though sometimes I wish the music didn’t ask so much.”

“Ask?”

He sighed. “It’s jealous. It wants all of me. It doesn’t leave room for much else.”

She pressed closer. “Then let it be jealous tonight,” she said.

He smiled in the dark. “You see? You externalize me.”

He could tell she was smiling too as he kissed her again. The refrigerator was humming along with the universe. The waves kept folding into themselves. And between the lovers’ breaths the question lingered—where, in all this, does the mind end and the body begin?

XY = man
XX = woman

Glad I could help.

u/GrayMatter1978

There are men with XX chromosomes.
There are women with XY chromosomes.

Glad I could help.

It’s another sunny day at America’s new favorite social media site. The article making the rounds on Reddit is from the conservative magazine, National Review, arguing that medical elites are redefining health by prioritizing patients’ beliefs over “normal physiology.” In other words, let’s not get carried away with this trans stuff when biology has the final word. The article’s central claim was deceptively simple: human biology hasn’t changed, and medicine loses its ethical grounding when it departs from conserving natural bodily functions in favor of fulfilling subjective identities.

Got that?

Health, the author suggested, is biologically given, not socially negotiated. Puberty, fertility, and sex differentiation are treated as privileged physiological norms. Intervening in them without disease, the argument goes, represents ideology masquerading as care.

The comments section, predictably, did not remain clinical for long.

What continues is some fragments from that thread — two users circling the same words (normal, biology, health), but inhabiting very different worlds.

Reddit Thread: “Medical elites are redefining health. The human body didn’t get the memo.”

u/GrayMatter1978

Cancer is normal physiology. A rare disease is just biology doing what it does.

And before anyone jumps in — biology doesn’t issue value judgments. Cells divide. Sometimes they divide badly. That’s still biology.

So what exactly is the “normal physiology” this article talks insists on? Is it the physiology the anti-transgender Right happens to favor at the moment?

A serious argument would at least acknowledge that function, proper function, dysfunction, health, disease aren’t handed down by nature like The Ten Commandments. (I thought this crowd would like that.) They’re negotiated. Constantly. By scientists, doctors, and societies. I’m just waiting for the conservative justices on the Supreme Court to step into it, putting themselves forward as biologists.

u/SteelTruth88

You think cancer is normal??!!

If cancer were normal, everyone would have it. Most people don’t. Ergo, it’s not normal.

Normal physiology means healthy physiological processes functioning as designed. Cancer is cells going haywire. That’s not biology “doing its thing.” That’s biology breaking.

u/GrayMatter1978

You’re already importing values while pretending you aren’t.

If “normal physiology” means what naturally occurs, then cancer is normal.
If it means what promotes flourishing, then that standard isn’t biological — it’s ethical.

We fight cancer not because it violates nature. Nature produces cancer just fine.
We fight it because it causes suffering, shortens lives, destroys projects and relationships.

That decision is social, moral, and human.

The article’s logic is as follows:
biology → normal → ethical medicine.
This doesn’t survive contact with reality.

What actually happens is:
biology → variation
society → valuation
medicine → intervention

u/SteelTruth88

Sophistry.

Cancer and infections occur when normal physiology suffers an insult — asbestos, radiation, poor sanitation. Medicine helps the body return to normal.

“Gender-affirming care” doesn’t restore anything. It mutilates healthy bodies and permanently ruins their function.

And spare me the call for “nuance.” We already know most gender-dysphoric kids, with therapy and support, come to accept their sex. Many realize they’re gay. What you’re defending is irreversible harm dressed up as compassion.

u/GrayMatter1978

You just made my point.

You’re calling cancer “abnormal” because of its consequences — suffering, loss, death. That’s not a biological criterion. It’s a moral one.

Let me offer a more difficult case.

Trisomy 21. Down syndrome.

Is that “normal physiology”?

Because a lot of people with Down syndrome live rich, meaningful lives. They don’t experience themselves as errors. So where exactly is the cutoff? At what IQ does physiology stop being “normal”?

Please be precise. A lot of families would like an answer.

u/SteelTruth88

That’s absurd. Down syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality. Compassion doesn’t change biology.

And stop pretending the article is ideological. It’s defending medical sanity. XY is male. XX is female. Puberty exists for a reason. Fertility exists for a reason.

Redefining health around feelings is how societies lose their grip on reality.

u/GrayMatter1978

Some babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. For decades, surgeons “normalized” them at birth — cutting away healthy tissue to satisfy parental and social expectations.

So which was the “normal physiology”? Before surgery? Or after society imposed its preference?

And while we’re here — are you also against circumcision? Or does “mutilation” only count when it works for your politics?

u/SteelTruth88

XY = man
XX = woman

Glad I could help.

u/GrayMatter1978

There are men with XX chromosomes.
There are women with XY chromosomes.

Glad I could help.

(The thread slows. Then one last exchange.)

u/SteelTruth88

Biology sets limits. You can’t wish them away. The body doesn’t care about ideology.

Once medicine stops anchoring itself to objective physiological norms, it becomes belief-directed. History shows where that leads.

u/GrayMatter1978

And once medicine pretends those “objective norms” arrive without interpretation, it absolves itself of responsibility.

The body doesn’t speak. It doesn’t issue memos, as the article suggests. We interpret it. We always have.

The danger isn’t admitting that health is negotiated. The danger is pretending it isn’t — while quietly enforcing one’s hierarchy of values as if nature itself had signed off on them.

Cilia:
I thought we were safe. You said there were metal doors. No windows. No one knew where we were.

Nicolás:
Someone always knows. That’s the first rule of power.

Cilia:
Don’t philosophize now. This is not the time for your lectures. We were disappeared, Nicolás. We perfected disappearance.

Nicolás:
You’re so good.

Cilia:
This had to be the military. You trusted them too much.

Nicolás:
I distrusted them evenly. That’s different.

Cilia:
You let them keep their villas. Their daughters in Madrid. I warned you about Madrid.

Nicolás:
Everyone has a Madrid. Even you.

Cilia:
My Madrid was Paris, and I gave it up.

Nicolás:
You never forgive me for that.

(A distant hum of engines. The ship subtly vibrates.)

Cilia:
Do you know what humiliates me most?

Nicolás:
That it was General Traision who betrayed us?

Cilia:
Yes. I slept with him for nothing. Well, not nothing.

Nicolas:
Do you remember our first apartment?

Cilia:
The one with the bad water pressure?

Nicolás:
The one where we believed things still mattered.

Cilia:
Things still matter. Just not to us anymore.

Nicolás:
Would you have done anything differently?

Cilia:
Yes. Leave earlier.

Nicolás:
Together?

Cilia:
Separately.

Nicolás:
Do you think history will forgive us?

Cilia:
History doesn’t forgive. It just edits.

(A knock on the door. A voice, polite, American.)

Voice:
Ten minutes.

Cilia:
Look at us. Fifteen minutes, and we still couldn’t agree on who betrayed whom.

Nicolás:
That’s a marriage. Do you know where we are?

Cilia:
A boat.

Nicolás:
Not a boat. A symbol.

Cilia:
Everything is a symbol to you revolutionaries.

Nicolás:
I recognized the smell immediately.

Cilia:
What smell?

Nicolás:
Imperialist air conditioning.

(Pause)

What do you think he’ll say to me?

Cilia:
Who?

Nicolás:
You know who.

Cilia:
He’ll say your name wrong on purpose. Then he’ll say it again louder. Then he’ll ask if you’re enjoying the ship.

Nicolás:
And then?

Cilia:
Then he’ll call someone else in to say the serious thing.

(A guard passes the window slit. Sound of boots. Chewing gum.)

Cilia:
Tell me the truth.

Nicolás:
Which one?

Cilia:
Nicolás! Get real — what are we going to do? What will the country do?

Nicolás:
Not much. The only thing between a strong Venezuela and a weak one was me.

Cilia:
So you were the entire army?

Nicolás:
And the navy.

Cilia:
And the air force?

Nicolás:
Well. Most of it.

Cilia:
We could appeal to the United Nations.

Nicolás:
They’ll send letters.

Cilia:
Official letters.

Nicolás:
With stamps.

Cilia:
Perhaps signed by someone European.

Nicolás:
And then forwarded to Viral TikTok.

(A beep. A crewmember wheels by a tablet playing Trump’s press conference.)

Cilia:
He said we’ll “run the country.” Like we were slackers.

Nicolás:
Did he mean literally run it? A marathon? They could use water stations.

Cilia:
Let’s keep focused.

Nicolás:
Fine. What should we say?

Cilia:
We should stick to one story. You were captured. I was not. That’s a good plot twist.

Nicolás:
I like plot twists.

Cilia:
Remember, the public will want a dramatic story.

Nicolás:
Dramatic?

Cilia:
Yes. Something like: “It all began with a missing empanada recipe.”

Nicolás:
Actually, I do think the empanadas were stolen.

Cilia:
General Traición ate them. And then betrayed us.

Nicolás:
This might be true.

(A horn sounds. The door unlatches.)

Guard (offstage):
Maduro. Five minutes.

Cilia:
So Nicolas . . the money?

Nicolás:
Which money?

Cilia:
The money.

Nicolás:
Oh. That money.

Cilia:
The money that was not technically drug money.

Nicolás:
Correct. It was logistics money.

Cilia:
Logistics that smelled like cocaine.

Nicolás:
Many legal products smell like cocaine.

Cilia:
Name one.

Nicolás:
Miami.

Cilia:
The generals flipped.

Nicolás:
Of course they flipped. They were rotational generals.

Cilia:
You paid them in dollars.

Nicolás:
Because they don’t trust the bolívar.

Cilia:
Because you destroyed the bolívar.

Nicolás:
I liberated it from expectations.

Cilia:
Do you know what hurts most?

Nicolás:
The betrayal?

Cilia:
No. I was scheduled for a massage today. What will life be like in the United States?

Nicolás:
Temporary housing.

Cilia:
A prison.

Nicolás:
A federal prison.

Cilia:
Do they have a masseuse?

Nicolás:
Yes, but he’ll be high on drugs.

Cilia:
Will there be other leaders there?

Nicolás:
Oh yes. It will be very social. You’ll meet everyone you sanctioned.

Cilia:
Wonderful. A reunion tour. Do they let you keep your watches?

Nicolás:
Only if they stop time.

Cilia:
What about the trial?

Nicolás:
Long.

Cilia:
Public?

Nicolás:
Extremely.

Cilia:
Televised?

Nicolás:
Clipped for TikTok.

Cilia:
With captions?

Nicolás:
Cruel ones.

Cilia:
What will you plead?

Nicolás:
Confused.

Cilia:
That’s not a plea.

Nicolás:
It’s worked for years.

(Pause.)

Cilia:
What about the Americans “running” Venezuela?

Nicolás:
They’ll jog along for six months. Trip over history. Blame socialism. Install consultants.

Cilia:
And leave?

Nicolás:
Eventually.

Cilia:
So… just like us.

(They nod.)

Cilia:
If they offer witness protection—

Nicolás:
—absolutely not—

Cilia:
—hear me out—

Nicolás:
—I will not live in Ohio—

Cilia:
—what if it’s Florida?

(He pauses.)

Nicolás:
Do they have good empanadas?

Cilia:
They have cocaine with better branding.

Cilia:
Do you think the Republicans are enjoying this?

Nicolás:
Of course. They have excellent memories for South American dictators.

Cilia:
That feels personal.

Nicolás:
It’s not personal. It’s tradition. They love strongmen—as long as they’re strong for America.

Cilia:
This is it, then. Captured. Disgraced. Extradited.

Nicolás:
Relax.

Cilia:
Relax?

Nicolás:
It’s the age of social media.

Cilia:
That’s not comforting.

Nicolás:
All I need is one good mug shot.

Cilia:
A mug shot?

Nicolás:
Yes. Strong lighting. Jaw slightly forward. Eyes saying: I regret nothing except foreign intervention.

Cilia:
You think that turns this around?

Nicolás:
Absolutely. Scowl goes viral. Hashtag: FreeMaduro.

Cilia:
You are not Nelson Mandela.

Nicolás:
No, but I am very meme-able.

Cilia:
This is a federal indictment.

Nicolás:
Even better. Nothing builds a brand like publicity.

Cilia:
What if the photo is bad?

Nicolás:
Then I blame the deep state.

Cilia:
What if you smile?

Nicolás:
Never smile. Smile is guilt. Scowl is ideology.

(Door opens.)

Guard:
OK Maduro, time’s up.

Cilia:
And the orange jumpsuit?

Nicolás:
Very populist.

(She stares at him.)

Cilia:
You’re enjoying this.

Nicolás:
No. I’m pivoting. Hopefully they shoot from the left. That’s my authoritarian side.

(He practices the scowl.)

Cilia:
Unbelievable.

Nicolás:
History is written by the victors. But the algorithm decides the thumbnails.

(They’re escorted out of the cell.)

Nicolás (as he walks out):
If this works, I want merch. And a meme coin!

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

—W. H. Auden 1907 – 1973

In the lusty American spirit of taking on a challenge, let’s take a stab at coming up with a few things he maybe cannot do.

10 Things President Trump Cannot Do

1. Break off his love affair with Vladmir Putin. As Jack said to Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, Vladmir, “I can’t quit you.” After all, the Russians fought against the Nazis.

2. Laugh at himself. He just can’t. Suzy is wrong.

3. Change the climate by firing all the climate scientists. What did Trump say when asked how to respond to Hurricane Florence? “Pay her as much as we did Stormy Daniels!”

4. Tell the truth. This is something even little kids can do. Perhaps he used to dream about it when he was a little kid. Perhaps it’s what he wanted to do when he grew up. As his mother told him when he was very young, “focus on what you can do, Donald.”

5. Become a woman. Some who are seventy-nine might do it, but Donald cannot. As his Deputy HHS Secretary said this week, “Men can never become women, and women can never become men.”

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Adrian (dryly): Twice—that’s no bad. Relax. No philosophy. Not unless you send me a picture of you on your knees begging for it. How about architecture?

Milo: Architecture?

Adrian: Frank Gehry died today.

(A pause. The clatter of Milo closing the fridge door.)

Milo: …Oh. Wow. Um . . yeah, THEE great architect of our time. Definitely a fan, here.

Adrian: I know. He was the only architect I could name whose buildings looked like they were solving equations in midair.

Milo: Haha. And the only one who made you feel something. My god—Gehry! The American city just got even dimmer. Less like a sketchbook, more like a spreadsheet again.

Adrian: I feel his buildings have a sense of permission in them. A freedom from the tyranny of right angles.

Milo: Yes! He made us feel like creativity was a civic right. I just read an article full of facts that point to our modern culture being a lot less creative and weird. And it’s not all the internet’s fault. Gehry created public spaces that didn’t have to be monotone and safe. He animated public life through sheer exuberance.

Adrian: And you’re already going to compare him to Frank Lloyd Wright, aren’t you?

Milo: Maybe. If you send a pic of yourself begging on your knees. Haha. Gehry’s the only one who even deserves the comparison.

Adrian: Go on, then. I’ll allow one romantic monologue.

Milo: Ok, I’ll give you one. Listen—when I first walked into Taliesin West outside Phoenix—back when I was in my early twenties—I felt that I didn’t walk, I just floated. Low ceilings that didn’t make one feel cramped, but rather in infinite space. Light came in sideways, like the sound waves of music. The walls were invitations to the next space. The whole place told you the earth isn’t beneath you—it’s with you and around you. I think that Wright healed individuals through intimacy and organic forms.

Adrian: Beautifully put. But Gehry—

Milo: Gehry healed whole cities. Wright healed the home, the hearth, the individual spirit. But Gehry animated public life through exuberance. He made civic space expressive, like a grin breaking across the face of a city too used to grimacing.

Adrian: Gehry healed cities. Nice. You know that Wright designed the first Guggenheim in New York, so there’s a built in comparison And I once read that he hated doing it, because he hated the city.

Milo: And then Gehry on to the Guggenheim in Bilbao—which wasn’t just a museum; it was a revolution. It resurrected a city. Reminded people that imagination can be a political, emotional power. His buildings didn’t sit in the landscape— they moved through it, like they were improvising. Which is what we humans do.

Adrian : So Gehry was Miles Davis and Wright was Bach?

Milo: Yes. Yes! Exactly. Wright gives you form that feels inevitable. Gehry gives you form that feels impossible until suddenly it’s there, shimmering like a humpback whale breaching in the sun. At least that’s my impression of Disney Hall. I’m glad you called. Is this loss bringing out some poetry in the mathematician?

Adrian: Gehry makes poets of everyone.

Milo: Or maybe grief does. I feel oddly… bereft. Like one fewer person is out there arguing with the ugliness of the world.

Adrian: We’ll still have the buildings.

Milo: Buildings endure. But the courage—we could use more of that.

Adrian: Maybe that’s our job.

Milo (laughing): Speak for yourself. I’m just a sax player trying to keep my students from overthinking their scales.

Adrian: And I’m just a logician trying to keep my students from overthinking the universe.

Milo: Haha. Maybe Gehry’s the bridge between us. He proved that structure can dance. That’s what you and I always argue about, isn’t it? How much the forms of reason can hold before they need to leap with empirical fact.

Adrian: And how much leaping can be justified before you need form.

(They fall quiet for a few seconds.)

Milo: What else is going on? Here’s to Frank Gehry.

Adrian: To Gehry—who made the world a little better by refusing to make it ordinary.

Milo: And who showed that beauty isn’t a luxury—it’s a public service just like cancer research.

Adrian (adjusting his glasses): I notice you end up there. Every time. You’re like a compass whose north is your own consciousness.

Milo: Can’t help it—I’m a performer. The self is the stage on which the world appears. Without the self there’s no world, no knowledge, and no ethics. It’s the core problem—it’s the hard problem. Not consciousness. Consciousness is often a disguise for the self.

Adrian: That’s backwards. Philosophy doesn’t orbit the self. The self is just the condition under which we solve deeper problems—space, time, causality, number, reason. You keep promoting it to the starring role when it’s really the backstage crew. Some, like Hume and Derek Parfit, reduce it to a bundle of neuronal interactions.

Milo: Precisely. Or, actually, not very precise. The self is a bundle? That’s the best eliminativists can do? Ask me to define any word—elephant, bread, emotion—you name it. And my answer can be that it’s a bundle. Except, of course for the antonyms of bundle. (laughs) Backstage crew?

Adrian: Part of the production. Not the point of it. Look—what got us into philosophy in the first place? For me, it was the elegance of a logical proof, the way reason pulls order out of the mess. That has nothing to do with the self.

Milo: Doesn’t it? That’s the problem with you rationalists. You’re never willing to admit who is doing the reasoning. As if proofs themselves are the ones driving cars and going to the ATM and having sex with your wife at night. (Why am I thinking of Elon Musk?) A proof assumes a point of view, Adrian. A subject who sees necessity. A mind recognizing itself in the structure of the world. Logic is a mirror for the self.

Adrian: Logic is public, Milo. It isn’t your mirror or anyone’s. That’s the whole reason Russell is worth reading. He tried to liberate truth from psychological drama.

Milo: And he failed. Even Russell’s truth depends on a knower. If the self weren’t there, what would truth even mean? Why would facts have meaning? Why would it be important if we are 92 million miles from the sun if we weren’t talking about we—this bundle of selfs?

Adrian (shakes his head): Truth is invariant under who happens to know it. You sound more like Nietzsche every time we talk.

Milo: Nietzsche wouldn’t be caught dead in a place with this lighting.

(They both glance at the bar’s flickering pendant light and listen again to the jazz trio playing. What would Nietzsche think of jazz, Milo wondered.)

Adrian: The problem is that when you say “self,” you smuggle in everything: experience, embodiment, memory, temperament, improvisation—your jazzman metaphysics.

Milo: And when you say “self,” you strip everything away until nothing’s left but the bare frame. A self with no pulse. No hunger. No fear. No swing.

Adrian: Because the living parts are contingent! The interactions are passive. Philosophy needs the necessary, not the biographical. If you start from the living self, you’ll never get beyond particularity.

Milo: Exactly. Because there is no beyond. The living self is the ground floor. You start there or nowhere. That’s what I’m arguing. And I’m done reading any more philosophy that doesn’t at least acknowledge the self. There’s nothing without it. I understand that truth and logic could be built into the universe. But it takes a self to discover it, if not invent it.

(The trio begins a slow blues in A-flat. A brushed drum rhythm vibrates the glasses on the table.)

Adrian (leaning in): All right—let’s grant your premise for a moment. Suppose the self really is the center of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. What do we gain?

Milo: Clarity. Honesty. A philosophy that matches how life is actually lived. The metaphysical question—“What is real?”—depends on a standpoint. The epistemological question—“How do we know?”—depends on capacities of a subject. The ethical question—“How should I live?”—presupposes an agent. The self is the intersection of all. The rest is science—biology, chemistry, and physics. Of course, the physicists would say it’s all physics.

Adrian: But that just shows the self is a link, not the substance. A node in a system. Kant would say: yes, the self conditions experience, but we study the conditions, not the self. The self is the lens; philosophy examines the optics, not the photographer.

Milo: That’s not philosophy, that’s physics. And a physics which isn’t up on quantum physics. Kant is the great champion of the self. He’s our modern hero who gifted us this thinking.

Adrian: That’s very poetic. Not very convincing.

Milo: Let me try another angle. When I improvise, I’m not thinking about music as some external object. The music is me. The horn is me. The audience, the room, the bass drum pedal creaking—me. There’s no boundary where the “world” ends and the “self” begins. It’s all one lived field. I’m sorry, that’s music not philosophy. But music gives me insight into philosophy. Philosophy is not just the optics, and unless it takes the photographer into account, I’m no longer interested. Because it’s just naive and incomplete!

(Milo sets down his beer hard enough that the waitress comes right over.)

Milo: Yes, another!

Adrian: That’s just Merleau-Ponty talking through the alcohol.

Milo (shrugs): No, this is me.

Adrian: The problem with your view is that it dissolves the self into experience. Then turns around and says the self grounds experience. Circular. How do you break that?

Milo: I thought you’d never ask. And your view denies the living self in order to keep your systems clean and inhuman.

Adrian: Necessary.

(A pause. The trumpet player takes a metaphysical solo.)

Milo: So here’s our split, Adrian. You think philosophy is about the structure of reason, and the self is just one of its artifacts. I think philosophy is about the structure of human being, of understanding, and of morality.

Adrian: Close. But let me refine. I think philosophy aims at the universal. And what’s universal in us is reason, not the idiosyncratic self.

Milo: And I think what’s universal in us is selfhood—the very condition of having any access to reason, world, or value in the first place.

Adrian: So for you, the self is the doorway.

Milo: For you, it’s the doormat.

(Adrian cracks a rare smile.)

Adrian: I’ll give you this, Milo. Your version of the self—messy, embodied, improvisational—captures something philosophy often forgets: the warmth of the world. The subject who bleeds into what it knows. Wordsworth—and don’t ask me why I remember this—talked of knowledge “felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.”

Milo: And I’ll give you this: your necessity gives philosophy its backbone. Without structure, the self collapses into sentiment.

Adrian: So we disagree on where philosophy begins.

Milo: And what it’s for. I’ll admit that when I watch my two cats I can see the externalist pathways you lay out for perception. Not so much for reason. They have a more limited and primitive self—thank god we’re in person and I’m not tweeting that line—and does this account for the more primitive reason. Surely you see that an advanced self is necessary for advanced reasoning.

Adrian: An advanced self? I’ll leave that for next time. But we agree philosophy needs both: a living subject and a universal frame.

Milo (raising his glass): To the tension, then.

Adrian (clinking): To the tension. May it be productive.

(The trio ends their tune on a soft, unresolved chord—just the way Milo likes it.)

Milo Cantwell, a jazz musician, alto saxophonist, instructor in improvisation at Harvard
Adrian Vale, a mathematician specializing in logic and the foundations of physics

Setting:

A corner table at The Plow & Stars, Cambridge, on the day after Thanksgiving. The air blowing in when someone enters carries a mild scent of wet pavement and the echo of a distant Red Line train rolling over the bridge. It’s exceptionally warm. A jazz trio is warming up—upright bass, brushed drums, muted trumpet—arranging their music under muted lighting.

The bar is full of scattered conversations: two graduate students arguing about whether all knowledge is science knowledge in the corner (obviously they’re Liberals); a couple on a first date trying too hard (obviously they’re Conservatives); an older professor-looking type reading a physical newspaper with a beer and staring into the distance (who knows what he is!).

Milo enters first, balancing a saxophone case and wearing a deep plum scarf even though the night is quite warm for scarves. His scarves are like talismans—he owns too many—and this one’s frayed edge testifies to a long-ago breakup he never quite recovered from. He orders a rye Manhattan, the kind a musician drinks not because he likes them but because he likes the ritual: the slow cherry drop, the glass fogging slightly at the rim. Ritual fills the spaces where religion used to live.

Adrian arrives soon after, carrying a slim black backpack filled with two identical blue shirts he bought that afternoon at Uniqlo—one to replace the one he was wearing, the other to keep on reserve. Adrian buys the same shirts partly from aesthetic minimalism, partly because choosing feels like a metaphysical risk. He orders a seltzer with lime because the idea of blurred faculties makes him uneasy; clarity is not just an intellectual value for him but a moral one.

Milo: (smiling) You look like you’ve just proved a theorem that disappointed you.

Adrian: I taught a seminar. Same thing.

They both laugh in obligation and sit.

Milo: How was your Thanksgiving?

Adrian: OK. My sister came over.

Milo: I’ve been thinking about what you wrote in that long text message just before the holiday. You still deny Russell had any Kantian inclinations.

Adrian: Not inclinations. Coincidences. Convergences forced by physics and logic. But no shift in metaphysics. No “warming up to Kant.”

Milo: Haha. That’s just wrong.

The trio on stage begins their set. Milo briefly goes into auditory mode. He tilts his head as though he’s listening for a pattern only he can hear.

Milo: Listen to that trumpet. You hear it as a melody, right? Not as scattered vibrations hitting your ear.

Adrian: Of course.

Milo: But the world doesn’t give you melody. It gives you pressure waves. You synthesize the melody. Your mind brings the unity.

Adrian: (shrugs) The auditory cortex groups similar frequencies. It’s physiology, not metaphysics.

Milo: For Kant—and for me—the structure of experience doesn’t arise from outside. The subject puts it there. That’s how a melody works.

Adrian: Milo, you’re making a mistake. What’s necessary for the human mind may not be necessary for mind in general, nor for the world. Russell understood this. That’s why he rejected Kant: Kant smuggles psychology into ontology.

Milo: That’s early Russell, by the way. But I just disagree. Kant isolates the structural contribution because he’s looking for universals that make experience possible in the first place—not “human quirks,” but general conditions.

Milo says this in a gentle way. It’s in fact deeply personal. He has always mistrusted the idea that the mind is merely a passive receptive.

Adrian: But even if Kant is right about the “structure of experience,” it doesn’t follow he’s right about the “structure of the world.”

Milo: Isn’t that exactly the question? Can we peel them apart?

Adrian swallows. His parents divorced over a philosophical disagreement—his mother a successful artist, his father a physicist. He’s spent years trying to keep both worlds separate.

Adrian pulls a small notebook from his pack and shows Milo a quote he copied earlier that day.

“What we know about the physical world is only its structure, not its intrinsic character.”
—Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits

Adrian: See? Structure, not essence. That’s Russell’s view. Pure objectivity.

Milo: (grins) Ah, but structure relative to what? You know that Russell provides the backdoor to Kant.

Adrian: (frowning) Explain.

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I’ve been leaning toward lighter wines lately. The heaviest red here sits politely at 13.5%, the Pinot at a featherweight 12.5%. The Torrontés, however, is the voluptuous one of the bunch at 13%—plush for a white, but worth every drop.

Kuentz-Bas, Crémant d’Alsace, Brut, France, 12%, $28 — Buy here.

Bubbly. There’s elegant, ephemeral sparkling wine . . . that’s mostly tasteless (Chandon or Mumm that starts every party?)—and then there’s sparkling wine you’ll get up and dance on the table to get the chance to drink. This Crémant from Alsace is firmly in the latter camp. Kuentz-Bas is an old estate in the fairytale hamlet of Husseren-les-Châteaux (we’ll return to them for a Pinot Noir). Their Brut compresses autumn into a glass. Toasty richness from lees aging wraps around delicate notes of honey, nectarine, and apple cider. The blend—Pinot Blanc and the rarely-spoken-of Pinot Auxerrois—feels like discovering a secret Alsatian country inn.

Bodega Colomé, Torrontés, Argentina, 13%, $11 — Buy here.

White. All four of these bottles are gentle on the wallet, but none more than this little wonder from Colomé, which practically jumped into my cart for $10.97. I return to this wine every year because no other white quite captures the joy the way Colomé Torrontés does. Rose petal at the start, nutmeg on the finish—it’s a wine that dances between freshness and fullness, making it a remarkably flexible partner for cheese, turkey, stuffing, even pie.

Kuentz-Bas, Pinot Noir, France, 2024, 12.5%, $28 — Buy here.

Red #1. Kuentz-Bas seems incapable of producing a wine that isn’t quietly magical. Importer Kermit Lynch puts it simply: you won’t find a better value—or a better introduction—to Alsatian Pinot Noir. The 2024 is drinking beautifully. Alsace isn’t Burgundy; perhaps that’s why this Pinot is so transparent and pure, like listening to Bach’s first cello suite played alone in a sunlit room. Simplicity that opens the heart while leaving the mind contemplating the experience. Earth, leaves, light, breath—everything direct, everything raw, everything essential.

Château Bernadotte, Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux, France, 2018, 13.5%, $21 — Buy here. (Also check your local wine store. That’s where I found mine.)

Red #2. There is something about winter’s approach that draws me toward Bordeaux—the need for fortification, yes, but also the need for poetry. I opened a bottle of the 2018 Bernadotte last week, and it’s royal flavor has lingered in my mind ever since. (The winery is named after the royal family of Sweden.) James Suckling notes blackcurrants, olives, dried herbs, smoke, and charred wood, with firm, fine-grained tannins. I’d add this: Bordeaux is the wine of late night solitude, after the plates have been scraped, the candles have guttered, the guests have wandered off to bed.

Picture yourself in a wingback chair, tucked into a paneled corner of a London club no one admits belonging to. Now is the hour to open that philosophy article you’ve been meaning to read—or the New Yorker piece on Gaudí’s La Sagrada Família. This Bordeaux will uncork a kind of tender clarity in your heart, and perhaps the gentle ache of nostalgia as another year tilts toward its end.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Theral

Barely. The morning after the election, he stood in his boxer shorts in the early quiet of his bedroom, the television on. His wife brought him coffee in a white cup. This term he would show them.

“You did it,” she said, smiling through miles of makeup.

He nodded. “Let’s see if it’s worth it. I mean how much money we’ll make.”

The cup shook slightly in his hand.

“This is the presidency of the United States, honey. It’s not about the money.”

He glared at her and pulled up his pants.

“Do you need help with those?” she asked with her own deep cynicism.

The job was bigger than he had thought. The days were loud, filled with meetings that turned to noise before he could finish a sentence. Everyone wanted something. His aides smiled too much. His vice president smiled most of all—young, steady, full of the faith of those who haven’t yet seen how fast things rot, and with hunger in his eyes. His key advisor watched him sometimes in the meetings, how he gave thumbs up and dominated the camera, how he checked his phone. This adviser looked at him the way a son looks at the father he plans to bury.

He slept less. When he did sleep, he dreamed of crowds disappearing into a great sea. He would wake up sweating with the idea that only one person was left in the crowd, his barber.

He told himself he had changed everything. He said it on television, on the new network he watched late into the night and early the next morning. He even said it to the mirror: I changed a lot.

But inside he felt the slow pulling away—the crowds growing smaller, the speeches thinner, the cameras hungrier. This was his second term and everything he looked at seemed to say “done.” The more of an effort he made on one day, the more uneasy he’d be the next. Maybe he hadn’t changed anything.

He had built things in his life. Towers, casinos, reality television shows. There was always a kind of truth in that, he thought. Folks said he cared nothing for the truth, but people needed to be distracted. They needed to forget. He had given that to them. He was the Woody Allen of politics, he smiled at the thought. Now they came to him for something else—belief. That was harder—but it was their problem.

He had never believed in The Truth. It was just a word men and women used when they ran out of better ones. But lately it was visiting him in flashes. In the mirror—his hair was thinning—and in the window’s reflection at night when he saw himself old, the face sagging, the eyes still bright but uncertain. His vibrant young Vice President.

He thought about his legacy, what he’d leave behind, like the social media company he’d named Truth Forum. The irony had pleased him. For a while. But the pleasure was thin and left a bad taste. Each post was a mirror of the last one. Each crowd cheered the same words a little more faintly. He knew that they were not there for the truth, but for him, for their own image they saw in him. What would happen when he wasn’t there?

He began talking to himself at night. Then to someone else.

He didn’t believe in the Devil the way his followers did, but sometimes he imagined him sitting across the room, half in shadow, the grin familiar. The Devil didn’t tempt him. He didn’t have to. He only listened. Was this his own Gethsemane? A Devil who listened like his father never did? All would be better in the morning when he would post on social media. It reassured him and his audience—no matter what he posted, as long as he did post. Then, doubt again. He couldn’t shake this constant doubt.

“They’ll devour it all,” he said aloud to himself and to Satan. “Every bit of it. The news, the pundits, the kids online. I caught it—the whole grand thing—and they’ll strip it to the bone by the time I’m gone and be on to the next.”

The Devil said nothing. He only watched and listened like the night sky.

Once, the old president woke before dawn and stood at the window of the residence. The city was dark, street lights lining the Mall. For the first time, he wondered if he’d ever really caught anything at all. Maybe there was no fish but only the hunger for it.

He rubbed his eyes and whispered, “I could have been something else. I always wanted to build those hotels in Dubai and Russia.”

The next day, he appeared on Fox News and said he was the greatest president of all time. The host laughed. He laughed too. But after the cameras stopped, he stayed in the chair longer than usual, staring at the reflection of the studio lights on the glass. Hesitant to let go of that smell that he knew was fading.

He knew the young vice president was already making calls. The aides were dividing loyalties. The donors had moved on. He would not run again, not really. He told people he might, because hope made them listen, and it fucked with the other side. But he knew this was the end. There was nothing else to do.

And . . . when the term was done, he left the White House quietly. The sky was the same pale gray as the morning he’d been sworn in. A Secret Service man stood by the car.

“Ready, Mr. President?”

“Yes,” he said.

He turned back once. The White House glowed faintly in the winter light. It looked smaller now, even with the new ballroom. He smiled, just a little.

“It was a good fight,” he said.

The agent nodded, though he didn’t understand. No one understood. He looked again into the agent’s eyes hoping for more understanding, for a recognition. But there was nothing. Only the agent’s job, his duty.

The Deep State, he thought. I never beat The Deep State.

As the limousine pulled away, the old president leaned back and closed his eyes. In the grey light receding behind him, he saw the open sea—not the real one, but the sea of faces, the lights, the roar that had once been, the would-be assassin. He saw them rushing toward him, endless and hungry. Then they began to fade, piece by piece, until there was only quiet water, and the sense of something big and shiny slipping away beneath the waves.

I had been drifting that way myself for the last few years, toward empiricism. Are we not all on philosophical journeys, wandering from point A to B? Or from point B back to point A? For me, it has been from rationalism to empiricism. After years of thinking of myself as an artist, an armchair philosopher—I found myself drawn to scientists, to their talk of data, their contact with the real. So, in preparation for this pilgrimage, I had packed along An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by the first great empiricist himself, the man who had promised to sweep the mind clean of innate ideas: John Locke.

On the first night after a stimulating reception meeting other conference goers and hearing their—mostly scientific—ideas, I went to bed reading my copy of Locke to find the early world of empiricism.

Instead, I found metaphor.

It began in the first chapter. There was the mind, Locke wrote, “as white paper, void of all characters.” Then the “cabinet,” the “storehouse,” the “impression.” Even this word “impression” which we lazily read as “the real” was a metaphor for a physical imprint. The physical made mental. I had expected the cold precision of observation; I found instead a poet with a carpenter’s soul. His empiricism was built of wood and light and wax—senses reimagined as furnishings of the mind. Ah, the mind! with its lightning speed. “For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, As soon as think the place where he would be,” observed the Bard.

But that’s exactly it. I knew what Shakespeare could do with his philosophies. I’ve known this since I was young. But I now wanted to understand empiricism, to find out whether Locke could point me in its direction.

“The candle that is set up in us shines bright enough,” Locke wrote. But his candle—was it not already a concession to reason? Light, that oldest of metaphors, made experience visible. Empiricism, it seemed, began not with sensation, but with the image of sensation.

I read on, frankly a bit disappointed, but also fascinated to know this writer who was a major part of The Enlightenment, who’s ideas partly shape the creation of the United States of America. For Locke, knowledge became an edifice, a structure built on a foundation. Ideas were “imprinted,” like coins stamped by the mint of nature. Experience was the marketplace where mind and world exchanged their wares. Locke’s England was a mercantile empire, and thought its economic forum, I thought, proud of my phrasing.

But what was I to do with another Shakespeare? Locke’s empiricism was alive with the very metaphors it denied. An anti-Platonic philosophy articulated through a Platonic trope. His cabinet was Plato’s cave, furnished and illuminated.

On the second evening after the sessions, I walked in the abbey gardens, past Mendel’s small greenhouse. The monks had rebuilt it; inside, pea plants climbed the trellis in neat rows. A biologist stood there, naming alleles as Locke might have named ideas. “Dominant, recessive,” he said, almost reverently. These words, too, were metaphors—borrowed from the language of power, not plants.

Then I had my epiphany: empiricism has never escaped metaphor. It cannot. The senses may give us raw material, but language must build the house. Empiricism must borrow from poetry. Locke’s metaphors were not lapses of style; they were his very method, sensory images that made reason empirical.

This did not discourage me. It thrilled me. If Locke, the master empiricist, was already a poet, then philosophy itself might be an art of translation—the constant turning of sensation into figure, figure into sense.

The next morning, I could not concentrate on the slides before me. I did not understand one scientist on the podium after the other, for my brain was whirling with my own discovery, but also with doubts and questions.

You’re confusing rhetoric with reason, I scolded myself. Metaphor is only ornament, not substance.

But how else can one speak of the invisible work of mind except by borrowing from the visible? The empiricist’s problem is that the very thing he studies—experience—is prelinguistic. He must translate the unsayable into figures the mind (or senses?) already know. Metaphor is not decoration; it is the experiment. It is the willingness, the curiosity to translate that new data into forms which already exist, but this time allowing for the new, the variation. The whole idea of metaphor is not A equals B, but that A is similar to B, but beware of the differences. Unlike with the discipline of mathematics, the spark in metaphor comes from the formula of different yet the same—a paradox in math.

We modern readers romanticize Locke, I continued to doubt myself. In his century everyone wrote that way. “White paper” was not poetry; it was pedagogy.

Perhaps. But if empiricism began pedagogically, that too is revealing. The classroom metaphor, the blank slate, the cabinet—all ways of making the student see how knowing happens.

At the break, I strolled again through Mendel’s greenhouse. The peas were maybe a little too neat in their climb toward the roof, their tendrils twisting into question marks. A young professor was discussing the genomic “code.” Philosophers of biology have repeatedly pointed out the “mechanistic” or “machine” metaphor so popular with biologists—none more so than the genome as a computer code. We never stop thinking in borrowed languages. And so what if we do? What was the mechanism of metaphor, to use the machine again. How did it work? And how the heck did empiricism work? Was it literal reception of knowledge from the five senses? Or did it lead us back to rationalism through metaphor?

But wait, why would Locke’s use of metaphor undermine his empiricism? Was I just going down that old rabbit hole of language again? Language is a tool to represent. Why must an empricist always talk literally? Why isn’t the whole panoply of tools open to him? And there I go with the tool metaphor. Was this never to end?

That night, a few of us gathered in a local pub. Perhaps some good Czech Pilsner would give my brain a break from these questions. And it was a fun time. But no! On my walk back to the hotel:

You’re sentimental. Empiricism can use metaphor without being metaphorical. Stop confusing ontology with aesthetics.

But isn’t there always a residue, a trace left by the words and ideas we use? The candle lights the laboratory; its light is still there even if we pretend to work in daylight. If empiricism means describing what we actually experience, then metaphor—the very texture of experience in language—belongs within it.

You’re giving up too soon. Go home. Finish Locke to the end. And then turn to Hume, see how empiricism consumes itself. Then on to Kant, where the forms of intuition restore the structure Locke mistook for experience.

Finally I felt some relief—that which comes from knowing what I will read next. It’s not exactly the satisfaction of answers so much as the satisfaction of better questions and somewhere to go with them. Locke’s cabinet could not stay empty. Yet it was his metaphoric courage—the belief that the mind could picture itself—that made later corrections possible. Without his candle, no critique of pure reason; without his cabinet, no synthetic a priori.

On the night before leaving, I walked once more through the abbey. The lamps in the cloister made yellow pools on the stone. I thought of the chain of metaphors binding Locke to the present: candle to lamp, cabinet to computer, impression to data point. We have never escaped the image; we have only refined its instruments.

Sitting beneath an archway I wrote in my notebook:

Empiricism must borrow from poetry, or it cannot speak.
The senses give material; metaphor gives form.
The experiment begins in language.

I would find a biology conference in Edinburgh early the next year. Hume was waiting for me there with his skepticism, and later I would find, beyond the flicker, some reconciliation in Kant—a philosopher who, like Mendel, believed the mind itself imposed its patterns on the world. But for those few days in Mendel’s garden, I had learned something simpler: empiricism was never merely a method. It was a voice—half scientist, half poet—”casting about” in the dark until the metaphor caught fire.

Now I have begun to suspect that all empiricism needs metaphor—the perception or translation of one idea in terms of another—and all metaphor is experiment. Locke’s cabinet is still with me, not empty at all—full of the furniture of wonder.

Subject: Two Americas — the signal vs. the noise

From: Jack Harris jharris@prairieforum.org
To: Maya Patel m.patel@strategiccommons.net
Date: Wed, June 6, 2035 at 8:14 AM

Maya—

Let me lay the table the way my grandmother would’ve before Sunday supper: we’re at Day 12 of 60, and folks are staring at two options on the table: chicken and beef. Track A (interstate compacts, block-grant waivers, do-it-now federalism) is what folks in town halls are actually chewing on today; Track B (the Two Republics Amendment with national consent votes) is the beef everyone argues about because it satisfies this national anxiety. The opinion docket’s organized by short codes—coalitions, agencies, trade groups, a few handwritten gems—and for once the comments read like people who did the homework.

My highlights so far:

CTN-43-118 — the Tribal Nations coalition. Our ancient residents seem calm and firm: treaties must cross the split; trust management pooled; water compacts sacred, not souvenirs. Best line: “We were here before your Union; we will still be here after any of your disunions.” That’s the tone I wish I’d learned in my first term instead of my last.

RMA-2-091 — retired missileers. Dry Air Force humor: “One nuclear chain of command is not romantic; it is necessary.” They’re fine with Track B only if nuclear C2 stays unified through transition, audited, no first-use drift. I can sell that back home without spraining anything.

ACUL-13-007 — credit unions. Dollar continuity for five years under a Monetary Coordination Agreement; joint playbook for failed banks so Main Street never learns the word “bail-in.” My Greeley barometer says: if the farmers in Kersey sleep, vote aye.

Pushback worth heeding: WWC-21-300 — Western Water Compact folks. They warn the 10-year “realignment vote” at the county level would shred basin management. They want a single state-level mulligan at Year 10. I’ve seen a dry riverbed. I don’t argue with people who measure in acre-feet.

What’s catching your fancy? Let’s compare notes.

—Yours in friendship,

—Jack

Subject: Re: Two Americas — you’re finally reading footnotes

From: Maya Patel m.patel@strategiccommons.net
To: Jack Harris jharris@prairieforum.org
Date: Wed, June 6, 2035 at 11:02 AM

Jack—

You’re not soft; you’re specific. (Do you find today’s date ironic for this exchange?!)

The missileers get stapled to the front of the Amendment: (1) single nuclear C2 through transition, (2) independent fissile-material accounting, (3) no first-use drift until successor treaties are ratified. Deterrence isn’t a vibe; it’s a wiring diagram.

ACUL-13-007 tracks with every bank run I’ve ever war-gamed. Five years minimum of the dollar under a Monetary Coordination Agreement, either a bi-republic Fed treaty or a hard, audited off-ramp for anyone who wants their own currency later. Credit unions hear panic before politicians do.

My red lines, stated plainly:

— Dual citizenship by default at Independence and also permanent freedom of movement. Think at least EU! MMF-55-230 (Mothers of Mixed-Status Families) is devastating; children shouldn’t be border-hostages to adult theories of federalism.
— A binding dispute forum with teeth. GOJC-14-500 (grid operators) want a tiny permanent court so the lights don’t go out when attorneys general discover the television camera. Three judges, fast filings, no theatrics.
— Agree with WWC-21-300: one state-level realignment vote at Year 10. Rivers and grids do not read our county maps.

CTN-43-118 is the center of gravity. I wish I’d had that line during the land-acknowledgment wars that produced more posters than policy.

As for you coming on TV: I know you prefer the diner to the green room. I’m going to need you in two green rooms anyway. Prepare to speak.

—M.

Subject: Re: Footnotes, fences, and the compacts that calm people down

From: Jack Harris jharris@prairieforum.org
To: Maya Patel m.patel@strategiccommons.net
Date: Wed, June 6, 2035 at 6:40 PM

Madam Secretary (you hate the moniker, I know; tradition compels me),

Three guardrails from the cheap seats:

Track A compacts are winning the ranch hands. People liked the Jefferson myth until they met Article IV. Give them interstate compacts with real waivers and block grants, and the temperature drops. State Superintendents Coalition (SSC-4-119): “We want to teach Tuesday under a rulebook that won’t be ripped up Wednesday.” Put that on a billboard.

Read more

Dr. Elena Vargas greeted me at the door. She was in her forties, sleeves rolled up, lab coat hanging half open as if it were an afterthought. I noticed her nails were short, unpolished, stained faintly with dye. Her hair was dark and natural. Her eyes were part of that impenetrable scientific wilderness that I knew I would never be a part of.

Yes, I could occasionally glimpse the wilderness they saw, but never could see it from their wild eyes. Once you go down the English Literature major path in college, you become separated from other worlds forever. But I digress.

“This is where the strange secrets of cancer give themselves up?” I asked, my reporter’s instinct slipping into easy but hopefully provocative banter.

She sported an accommodating grin. “More like where we chase them — and they run just fast enough to keep us working late.”

It happens to be the case that I continually marvel at the scientist’s command of metaphor.

I chuckled aloud. We walked past several benches, students bent over their experiments. One postdoc was piping samples into a 96-well plate with the steady hand of a monk at prayer. (Is this the wrong metaphor?) Elena stopped in front of a glowing 3D map on a screen, neon colors of green, yellow and purple shifting with strange life.

“This is the study I wanted to show you,” she said, tapping the screen. “We’ve been mapping the proteome of breast cancer cells under drug treatment — at single-cell resolution, in their microenvironment. Not just the genes, not just the transcripts. The actual proteins doing the work.”

“You’ve told me before that if the genome is the script of the play, the proteins are the performance,” I recalled, happy to follow along.

“Yes,” and she zoomed in on a cluster of cells. “See this? These tumor cells are overexpressing PD-L1 — no surprise, that’s how they keep T-cells at bay. But look here.” She highlighted another set of cells, stromal fibroblasts wrapped around the tumor. “They’re pumping out Galectin-9, which amplifies PD-L1’s immune suppression. That interaction was hidden until now.”

I leaned in. “So it’s not just the tumor cells— the neighborhood of these cells matters. The Google map of the cell here.”

“Exactly. Cancer recruits locally. And if you only look at DNA, you miss the whole performance.” She paused, enjoying my journalist scribbling—as many interviewees do. “Here’s the kicker: when we treat with a PROTAC molecule targeting Galectin-9 — a little degrader that tags the protein for destruction — the whole system shifts. PD-L1 signaling drops. T-cells rush back in. In mouse models, tumors shrink fast.”

I must have made a sound, because she laughed. “Don’t look so startled. We didn’t cure cancer. But we opened a door.”

Elena had told me before that we will never “cure” cancer. We will just delay its harmful effects so that the patient dies of something else instead. Cancer is becoming more and more a chronic disease.

She flipped the display to a time-course graph. “Six hours after treatment, STAT3 phosphorylation in tumor cells falls by 60%. At twelve, NF-κB signaling dampens. By forty-eight hours, Caspase-3 cleavage shows up — apoptosis, the death cascade. But here’s the twist: it doesn’t happen in every cell. Some clones resist entirely. That heterogeneity—that difference from on cancer cell to the other— is the reality you only see through proteomics.”

I felt the thrill I always chase as a journalist — the moment the jargon dissolves and the story bursts open. “You’re not just watching genes misbehave. You’re watching life write and rewrite itself in real time.”

Elena’s eyes softened, and I knew she would step down to my level. “Yes. That’s what biology is: fidelity and improvisation. DNA gives us the structure, the rules of base-pairing and proofreading. But proteins — they’re history unfolding, the casting about, the variations that make every tumor, every patient, unique.”

I jotted “structure and history” in my notebook and underlined it twice. This was especially fascinating to me as I had been up late the night before reading of philosophical tension between Locke and Kant. Locke postulated that we come into the world with a blank slate, tabula rosa, and that experience creates all our knowledge, including that which comes from reasoning. How could we come with reason built in, or innate, when it takes reasoning some time to figure things out, he provocatively asked. Kant responded a hundred years later that, yes, knowledge comes only through experience over time, but that we must have abilities “structurally” built in at birth in order to receive experience. This included the sense of space and time. Today in this MIT lab on the Charles River it seemed that this tension between the structural and the historical exists at the biological level as well with the genome—and the proteome.

“Cancer is what happens when the structure frays and the history runs wild,” Elena went on to say. “That’s why it’s devastating. But it’s also why studying it teaches us what life itself is made of. If we didn’t allow for mutations, we’d never have become humans. Was cancer one of the bargains life made?”

We moved to another workstation where a time-lapse video played: cells dimming, flaring, signaling as the drug took hold. I’m still contemplating Elena’s last metaphor—life as a bargainer. How much of biology is expressed metaphorically? Is it fundamental to scientific thought, to all thought! And what if it is? Does the non-literal make our understanding any less real?

“Watch,” she whispered. “First the proteins quiet down. Then one pathway reignites — as if the cell were saying, Not so fast. We block one note, but the melody keeps going.”

I couldn’t look away. “You make it sound almost artistic.” I must let her know what I am thinking as well.

She tilted her head. “Maybe it is. Biology is yet another way of listening to the universe.”

We laughed together, though it wasn’t a joke. Outside, the Charles River was catching the late afternoon light through the large windows, leaving me with a sense of physical beauty that matched the wonder I felt at what I’d seen on the screen. I turned again to see the proteins flickering, restless, slowly revealing their secrets. I left thinking I had met Kant and Locke in the lab — structure and history spiraling together, like the DNA helix of life itself.