The First Lesson She dips her chalkduster in water and smears it across the chalkboard. Us six-year-olds watch the shades of green change in front of us. Ripe avocado peel dissolving back into sunbleached tennis ball. She writes EVAPORATION  where the wetness once was. This is your first formal lesson in alchemy. A year later, time at school is divided into increments of classes. The sorcery of the water cycle is quartered to science. You ’ll see drawings of this phenomenon

I'm sitting alongside my teammates in a stadium in Tbilisi, Georgia. We’ve lost two games in a rugby tournament so now we’re watching...

The architecture that has had the most profound effect on my worldview is an olive-green tent, spanning 90cm in width and peaking at an...