Sublime

In her novel Stones from the River, set in Nazi Germany, Ursula Hegi reveals the suffering of the “other” in a startling way.

Some prefer to assume health as an identity. I am healthy, we tell each other, meaning that we eat certain foods and avoid others, that we exercise and do not smoke. Health, it is implied, is the reward for living the way we live, and lifestyle is its own variety of immunity.

“Being able to say ‘this is who I am’ when everything else feels uncertain, flimsy, prone to dissolution, may be the greatest comfort we have. Is anything more seductive, more empowering?/ To be alive is to subject oneself to the reality of being permeable/ so, while I welcome the pleasure of those moments when I feel like myself, I don’t think I w

In some ways, the distinction between normalcy and pathology is arbitrarily defined—as well as hard to measure.