August 2001
It’s important to recognize my imperfections; it’s also important to stop pretending I’m less than I am. This morning, I woke up suffused with a love no words can describe. But in a few minutes, I was reaching for my dog-eared script, already forgetting the radiance that had permeated my being.
Sunbeams
We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
Neighborhood Bully
Ramsey Clark On American Militarism
Our overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination — that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible; and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of our foreign policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops; the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of resources. And insofar as any people or states get in the way of our domination, they must be eliminated — or, at the very least, shown the error of their ways.
O My Little Breath, O My Little Heart
Late-morning light falls on the gray carpet of our bedroom as I do my daily yoga practice and think about my upcoming trip with my two grown kids to the Southwest. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, but now, as the date draws near, I’m worried about how it will go. My children and I rarely travel together anymore.
An Unfamiliar Form Of Solitaire
When I first came to this mountain town in central Mexico a year ago — bored and dissatisfied with myself and my American surroundings — I was eager to learn about a group of thirty or so imigrantes, American expatriates, who gathered daily in the lobby of the Hotel Jardin.
On The Lake
This was early in the morning, the day after Thanksgiving. My grandfather wore a tan cotton jacket and an old-man’s hat almost the same color. He sat at the wheel of a 1948 Ford he had bought and painted himself. You could look at the lime-cream color from twenty feet away and see the brush marks. He turned the key, glancing at me with the beginning of a smile and with a squint — against Kool smoke — that looked like a wink.
Jingling Bracelets
Saïd awakens at three in the morning and has a cup of strong coffee and some leftover couscous from the night before. His children are still sleeping in the mud house, but his wife has been up for a while to get the fire going and make the coffee. The two of them sit quietly beside the fire. She yawns, waiting for him to leave so she can go back to sleep. He has a long walk ahead of him, at least six hours.
