The next line

You're in. Thank you.

Once a month, a letter comes from this garden: the essays written that month, the passages readers kept most, and what I've been reading. Sometimes a note a reader wrote in the margin, with my answer. Nothing more often than that, and nothing in the letter is kept from the site.

You can reply to any letter; the reply reaches me. Every letter ends with a way out, if you ever want one.

A few ways in while you wait for the first:

• How the pencil works: select a few words in any note to keep them, pencil a note beside them, or write back to me about them.
• Start reading here

Return to the garden: The essays here stop before their sense does. The letter is where some of them
carry on.