Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough, to choose what to pay attention to, and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. –excerpt, This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living…
Today is Fat Tuesday, tomorrow is Lent, a season of abstinence. I was not raised Catholic, but I understand the logic of deprivation as preparation for newness, the emergence of new life. The truth is ancient, predating the Christian era. That’s the dynamic of life, of reality, of Nature, and the arc of human…
The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in his country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. A Russian who uses his imagination is done for. I certainly never use mine. My job is to…
Yesterday, I arrived at Starbucks at my customary time of 7AM. The evening snowfall was ending and the roads were treacherous. The parking lot was not plowed. I was the only customer in sight. Several staff had arrived and were preparing for the morning rush. I offered to grab a snow shovel to clear…
For who has despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice, and shall see the plumbline in the hand of Zerubbabel; these seven are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. —Zechariah 4:10 I’ve not lost my mind. I seldom quote verses of scripture. In…
I thought that I was through with the subject of “time.” But no, the choice is not , was not mine. “Time” is not through with me. There is more that I must say. It is impossible to assess the meaning of time, because we are like fish; we humans swim in the sea…
Return by Gala Mukomolova There are poets with history and poets without history, Tsvetsaeva claimed living through the ruin of Russia. Karina says disavow every time I see her. We, the daughters between countries, wear our mean mothers like scarves around our necks. Every visit, mine recounts all the wrongs done against her…
The snow lies deep, parking lots remain unplowed. The world has not ended in ice. Not yet. Not today. I am comforted by my customary warm cup of coffee with the green goddess Starbucks logo. Many worship at the altar of the green goddess. There are far worse religious obsessions. With this one, what…
Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean really, really, honest? Sometimes I get sooo scared! I’ll wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and it’s pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen to me in the…
All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that. —Balthasar Gracian So began our essay, Flavors of Time by Dean Buonomano. We awaken to consciousness upon birth, a consciousness that increases with the mastery of motor skills and then of language. Observe a child over the year…
