• DHARMA

    In Tibet there are more than 80 words to describe states of consciousness, several words to explain the sound of prayer flags rustling in a Himalayan breeze that reaches up to the crest of the peaks that lick at the slowly gathering clouds, all of these words never uttered. There are no words in Tibet…


  • YIDDISH

    My grandmother lapsed into Yiddish only on special occasions “where other words won’t fit” she said, where there is no English to describe the indescribable, blessed be He, but we knew that it was merely a convenient way to keep us out of the conversation, while they clucked. Mah Johng is a game that can…


  • IN LOVING MEMORY (17 this time)

    Just what will the puppet king say or will he simply run and hide as we are left to mourn and pray Seventeen more are dead today, we know better than to abide just what will the puppet king say more hollow words, for which they pay “only more guns can stem the tide.” As…


  • AGING GRACELESSLY

    To know the road ahead ask those coming back. — Chinese Proverb I have progressed to the point that I no longer mark time in neat segments based on rotation of this world about that, now I am measured against those around me, I seek those with whom I share an age. It is best…


  • MARKED

    The oddest thing about being Buddhist is what I once was, and not just in a prior life. Born, it turns out, and adopted into a secular Jewish family, I must still be Jewish even if I might have lapsed back to secularity, they say, because my Jewishness is a mark, Cain-like it seems, though…


  • COGITO

    She said, “I truly think that a large part of your problem is that you spend too much time thinking about what other people think of you.” He wasn’t inclined to agree, but she did think that so he had to give it consideration. “I don’t think so,” he replied, “but if you think so,…


  • AGING

    She would have been, what … does it matter anymore, frozen in time at that last age before time ceased to matter and images became locked and only the viewer grew older but glad at least for that. The only thing worse than getting older is not she once said, then as was her fashion,…


  • AMOUR

    A voice clear, jazz straight up in six strings with no surprises, but sitting next to my wife and lover it is what an evening wants in much the same way as a night in the heart of winter demands spooning beneath the blanket pulled up to our chins the outside world, having ceased to…


  • GET IN LINE

    She knew for a certainty that the shortest distance from here to there would be the one route he was incapable of finding. It had always been like this, impatient to get somewhere, he trying to accommodate her, yet still finding the most circuitous route. He was always embarrassed, apologized profusely until the day the…


  • REVISION

    She said, “As we get older we start to come from the place we only wished we were from, and the place from which we came, becomes the place from which we are now glad we never visited.” He said, “As I age, my youth changes, and the things I say I did are increasingly,…