Something small, looked at far longer than anyone normally would, until it opens onto something larger.

The Sense That Was Never Let In

Every description of a smell is a description of something else. Try it with the most ordinary one. Coffee. You can say it is warm, bitter, dark, roasted — but bitter is taste, warm is temperature, dark is sight, roasted is just the process that made the smell, named instead of the smell. Push further […]

What the Fire Kept

A clay tablet, to last, must be burned. Unfired clay is soft. Write on it, let it dry in the sun, and you have a record that will hold for years — until it gets wet, or dropped, or pressed back into the lump it came from to be used again, which is what usually […]