Eons ago, during the Obama Administration, I stood in the checkout line of a CVS drugstore in a small Georgia town whose most thriving industry, as far as I could tell, was the selling of title loans. The woman in front of me, with a modest cart full of goods, was...

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. -- Albert Schweitzer I’m not chewing it, sir. It’s chewing me. -- John Steinbeck, The Affair at 7, Rue de M-- I do what I can to make the world a better place. I don't personally provide the...

How many times has this scene, or a variation on it, flickered across a movie screen or been streamed onto the flat face of your favorite device... Someone seeking revenge and bearing a deadly weapon leaps out of the shadows toward another person - someone who has...

Rachel’s departure was meant to be final. She had left me twice before - the second time, we divorced and then remarried - and I watched her go each time with a feeling that was far from happy, but also with that renewal of self-respect, of nerve, that seems to be the...

I opened the gate and they stopped, turning. I was trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say, and she screamed and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes began to stop and I tried to get out. I tried to get it off of my face, but the bright shapes...

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests... Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?...

Impermanence rules everything. Everything is susceptible to change, everything transforms. Nothing lasts forever... Without impermanence, all of life would be impossible. A seed could not grow into a fruit, for it would forever remain a seed. -- Brian Thompson, Zen...

Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on... Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you. -- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose They say that you shouldn't schlep...

The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood... I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window... Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. --...

Look at the moon. It travels in the sky completely free, and this freedom produces beauty and happiness. -- Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted on Twitter Actually it’s constrained by the Earth gravity. If it was completely free it would be floating through space and we wouldn’t...