Far from normal, everything about Butte looms larger than life, magnified, exaggerated, like some gross caricature of itself. Butte’s villains are more villainous, its heroes more heroic, its wealth more extravagant, its poverty more grinding. Butte’s triumphs are the stuff of legends. Butte’s tragedies are almost too painful to bear. And yet, in this caricature we see somehow more clearly — the essence standing out in stark relief. Michael Punke, Fire and Brimstone Back in June, I sounded a conch on Twitter and asked for recommendations on quintessential books featuring or inspired by Butte, Montana. Thanks largely to a kind…

The bardo state occurs not only at the moment of death or the moment before death, but all during our lives; the bardo is the uncertainty and groundlessness we often feel. Match to the Heart There is nothing in nature that can’t be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration. The Solace of Open Spaces Yet in all this indeterminacy, life keeps opting for life. Islands, the Universe, Home I had an odd moment of recall a few weeks back over a green Honda Civic. It was one of those early 90s models with the hatchback. I forget…

It’s a good day if I don’t get asked either of these questions by people I know: How are you? Have you read any good books lately? These questions always overwhelm me. They’re too broad. I think I’d have an easier time with them if I could willfully go into macro-perspective mode, but I’m usually on the life-one-day-at-a-time program, and it’s difficult to pan out a bit. I think the accepted shorthand for this state of being is survival mode, but I hesitate to claim that because in terms of circumstances, I’m not doing too shabby. It’s just my mind…