Dear Reader,
On August 1st Brontë and I moved to Paris. The same place I moved twenty years ago, to the one city I’ve never gotten lost in. It took two days to fall back into the old routines, and nineteen days to run into someone I know. Le monde est un village, or piccolo mondo as a friend likes to say. I like to think that’s the better part of amor mundi, or at least makes loving the world feel a bit easier. A woman at the library remembered me from two years ago, and the man behind the counter at my favorite spot in the Pletzl asked where I’d been. The owner of the little wine bar asked if my French had gotten better. Strange to find spots of familiarity, like a cool spot of water in hot sea.
When I arrived, I realized I’d only seen the same forty faces for the past seven months, isolated in a small French village in the Midi-Pyrénées. Walking down Rue Rivoli the first afternoon shocked me back into the world of being with others. The heat finally broke this past week, after two months of sweltering weather. And the faces in my new neighborhood are beginning to grow familiar, with the daily commute to and from the library. It’s been a working summer. But last weekend I flew to Italy to meet some California friends and loaf along the coast for a few days, visiting the beaches near Castro. It felt like being dropped into a Patricia Highsmith novel, and made me miss Naples. Now, I’m back with a bit of sun and we finally had the first proper rain shower since my arrival. I’m looking forward to whatever Autumn may bring.
More soon.
Until soon,
Sam
Join me this September for a course on Hannah Arendt: Loneliness, Isolation, and The Specter of Totalitarianism! This course is open to all paying subscribers. Details and registration here. If you choose to pay, I’ll roll your enrollment fee into scholarships for future classes.
There are a few spots left in the generative writing workshop designed to get you writing, and to finish a draft of an essay, article, chapter, or overview section for a manuscript proposal. Together we will work on writing for a public audience! All are welcome. Details and registration link are in the post below!
Or, Enroll here.
This fall we will explore the many dimensions of loneliness, solitude, attention, intention, love, friendship, loss, and gentleness through philosophy, literature, and poetry. We begin on East Egg with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, meeting one of the loneliest men in American fiction. From there, Simone Weil will invite us into a philosophy of attention, intention, solitude, and love, before Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse turns our attention to the passage of time and the fragile shape of memory. We will spend an evening with Ralph Waldo Emerson reflecting on tenderness and the art of friendship, meditate on loss alongside God’s lonely man, Job, spend some time in the verse of Emily Dickinson, and close our fall semester with Anne Dufourmantelle’s The Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living.
Together, these works ask us to consider how we might attend more deeply to ourselves, to one another, to time, to suffering, to the world around us, and what it might mean to live together with greater tenderness and gentleness.
Enroll in each class individually or purchase a class pass for all four courses and three workshops and save 20%. Class passes do not include the writing workshop. There are two subsidized spots available in each writing workshop, write to me if you would like one. Early enrollment is open below. Writing Workshops are limited to 12 students.
All students will receive a welcome email one week before the beginning of class. All class recordings will be sent within 24 hours if you miss a class. Private Discussion board available for all enrolled students.
Good for all four classes and three workshops
10/11 - The Great Gatsby
10/18 - The Great Gatsby
10/25 - The Great Gatsby
11/1 - Gravity and Grace
11/8 - Gravity and Grace
11/15 - Gravity and Grace
11/22 - To The Lighthouse
11/29 - To The Lighthouse
12/6 - To The Lighthouse
12/13 - Power of Gentleness
12/20 - Power of Gentleness
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship
Thursday October 29, 2026
5:00pm - 6:30pm EST
Job
Thursday November 19, 2026
5:00pm - 6:30pm EST
Loneliness in the Poems of Emily Dickinson
Thursday December 17, 2027
5:00pm - 6:30pm EST
Tuesdays, September 8 — October 6, 2026 - 3:00pm - 5:30pm EST
Sundays, October 11 - November 8, 2026 - 3:00pm - 5:30pm EST
Sundays, November 15 - December 13, 2026 - 3:00pm - 5:30pm EST
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