- Somewhere in a Brooklyn bar, a friend of a friend’s husband is offering his car and his entire day to help you move in exchange for beer.
- Somewhere in New Hampshire, a record store sells a copy of Stadium Arcadium for three dollars.
- A Syrian refugee who pushed a boat for three hours and saved twenty lives won a swimming heat at the Rio Olympics.
- The sun keeps rising everyday, whether you wake early to see it or not. (Every now and then, you should wake early.)
- The used bookstore owner in Portsmouth, New Hampshire remembers you and the Kerouac books you bought two years ago.
- A DonorsChoose project asking for over six hundred dollars to help a schoolteacher pay for books for her students to read gets fully funded in twelve hours. Most of the donors are her twenty-something friends, not her parents’ wealthier acquaintances.
- Somewhere in Michigan, a group of young poets are spending a Monday night in a dive bar speaking boldly about race, religion and what it means to love. The crowd favorite ends the evening with a love song to whiskey.
- Somewhere on the Massachusetts turnpike, the person in the pick-up truck in front of you pays for your toll.
- The more time passes, the more you realize how much you hurt the person you love the most, and still you are forgiven.
- It rained on your wedding day and no one minded.
- The lake was warm.
- The whole family was there.
- The tornado missed us.
- The more time passes, the more you realize how much you hurt the person you love the most, and still you are forgiven.
- You read this in a book: “Doesn’t that make the universe a giant lottery, then? you purchase a ticket when you’re born and it’s all just luck whether you get a good ticket or a bad ticket. it’s all just luck. my head swirls on this, but then softer thoughts soothe. no, no, it’s not all random. if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely, and the universe doesn’t. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can’t see.”
Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak (’11) lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she spends the vast majority of her time teaching English Language Arts. You may also find her at barre exercise classes or playing (and losing) at bar trivia. She continues to be inspired by the energy and diversity of New York City and the beauty of that certain slant of light.
