The people and things we want feel very far away. Everything else feels far too near. Daily life is incorrectly calibrated. Lockdown kept us painfully apart. The virtual keeps us painfully together. Everyone wants the same thing. We all crave spaciousness. We all feel too close, without any closeness. This paradoxical sensation of claustrophobia and isolation is a condition of “absolute proximity”. Have we changed? We interview archaeologist DAVID WENGROW on the dawn of everything. Philosophers SLAVOJ ZIZEK and TIMOTHY MORTON agree about the future of humans on planet Earth. Design studio METAHAVEN contribute an insert on the stuff of experience and sensation. Photographer TACITA DEAN captures a boat abandoned at sea. An essay by URSULA K. LE GUIN reviews the Hero narrative, with photography by MAGALI REUS. Film curator RÓISÍN TAPPONI reviews fake nails, while JACK SELF reviews lateral flow tests and mindfulness. CLAIRE MARIE HEALY reviews the girlish giggle; SEBASTIAN OLMA reviews autonomy in the art world; VIVIAN AMOS reviews millennial pink and zoomer green; nine Norwegians review chronic pain in a cultural probe by ANNA ULRIKKE ANDERSEN; architects SECRETARY review 14,495 flats in Stockholm; KRISTABEL CHUNG reviews Hong Kong’s live-in labour; JACOB DREYER reviews China’s “lying flat” movement; HARRY WOODLOCK reviews vital exhaustion; MADDY WEAVERS reviews anonymity; and @whylookatanimals presents a cardinal feeding a goldfish.