Bart Schaneman

Waking up to a phone with an on-screen notification from the New York Times reading “U.S. say North Korea has nuclear-capable missiles” does not make you want to get out of bed, as alarming as it is.

We all promise we won’t lose touch. Friends forever. You’re like my brother. My sister. I won’t be gone for that long. We’re not going to change that much.

Or maybe they were like me. Honest as a child, lost it, then fought to get it back.

I hope the traditions of good journalism that were built through more than a century of standards and refining the craft won’t be lost due to a “transition period.”

I just want to feel exactly like I did when I used to walk home from school and drop off my books in my house and run outside and I could play until dinner. Love makes you feel like that.

If politics really don’t matter, if the market makes all the decisions, than how about I treat my vote like I would the marketplace?

It feels like the work I do is only for myself and the company that employs me. Not for the good of the nation. Not for my family. Not for any “greater good.” In a way I prefer this.

The tapestry of characters he weaves is made from the fabric of his past. But the stories transcend simple realism.

It takes nerve to talk to someone you might find interesting or attractive on a bus or a train. To ask someone to unplug so you can begin a conservation is beyond even the most confident of us.

There comes a time when you’re either traveling to gain experience or you’re running away when things get hard.

The next day I went to meet someone I needed to tell something. It was raining in Williamsburg. Kids ran past McCarren Park smiling, no umbrellas, soaked. I had a little collapsible black thing she gave me last summer when I lived in Brooklyn and we were still seeing each other.

The modern man can travel in every circle. Sit at a table with farmers playing poker in Nebraska, hipsters snorting Xanax in Berlin, travelers smoking hash in Nepal, and day traders talking stocks in Manhattan.

This plane keeps us all together, and as these chattering Chinese fly us to Jakarta I am wishing you could be who you were. I show you how to fill out the customs form. I have been here before. You haven’t. All I want for us is to stay whole.

Gone at 21. Can anyone understand how terrible that is? You waited your whole life to have your freedom. You knew that you wanted to be left to make your own choices when your time came. Then to have that taken from you.

My sister, brother and I grew up on 80 acres of flat, rich soil, in a climate so arid that it wouldn’t have been farmable if it had not been for the vast underground water source called the Ogallala Aquifer. Canal systems and man-made reservoirs help deliver water down from the Rocky Mountains.

Those of us who live far from home experience a longing for it that you can only know if you’ve lived away for a real length of time. We romanticize where we’re from and talk about it with an appreciation we didn’t have for it when we lived there.

It’s not just Korea. The last time I visited China, in both Beijing and Shanghai I met scores of young men and women who had moved there for the opportunity it offers entrepreneurs. The expat community in Seoul is dominated largely by English teachers for good reason—teaching gigs here can be excellent.

For awhile I swore by the mantra “we’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be.” It’s a comforting idea, and if you repeat it until you believe it you can use it to quiet down your restlessness. But it only really works when you’re actually satisfied. I don’t believe it consistently. We don’t always make the best choices for ourselves.