Chris Bohjalian

A single, ordinary person

A single, ordinary person still can make a difference – and single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day. Chris Bohjalian

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn’t a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?). Chris Bohjalian

Dead … might not

Dead … might not be quiet at all. Chris Bohjalian

When it seems you

When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening. Chris Bohjalian

My mother used to

My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt. Chris Bohjalian

I have lived with

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better. Chris Bohjalian

As Jeremy Bentham had

As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear … Read more

The world is filled

The world is filled with human toxins — not the darkness that we all occasionally crave, but actually people who are so unwilling to bask in the angelic light that is offered us all that they grow poisonous — and you can pray for their eventual recovery and healing. And sometimes those prayers will be … Read more

Now it is you

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they’re right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome … Read more

The reality is that

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide – the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War. Chris Bohjalian