The Rambler

I needed a break, so I stopped by the magazine store on 35th Street. I suppose my idea was to look for something with a CD in it, so I could find some new music (I've become hermetic in my tastes). Nothing looked interesting; everything was glossy and popular. You can't sell a magazine about unpopular bands, but that's what I wanted.

So I went back to the magazines about writing. And I saw the Rambler.

Last year, it caught my eye because it featured an article by a professor I knew in Chapel Hill. Sure enough, it's published in my favorite University town.

The November/December issue's cover shows a woman with an upside-down umbrella leaking rain on her. And the magazine isn't about much more than that. It's got articles about small things: old stories, food, fatigue, airplanes. No commentary on current events, no policy articles, no strategic national institutions. There are some very pretty photographs. It's evocative of real life, which is what we have left after our ambitions are spent, on the other side of dreams, when we can see the work of our hands and tell others how it came to be.

You strive, strive, strive, and need a break. Here is a place for small stories, inconsequential to big missions, but absolutely necessary to the good life.