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The End of the Road

Last year, after Norma and I visited Costa Rica at the invitation of a friend, we vowed to return with our three children. We were certain they’d be as enthralled as we were by this rugged, beautiful country, its tropical rain forests and steaming volcanoes and crowded markets. Mistake number one.

Mr. Handyperson

A house is a remarkable multipurpose system made to provide shelter from heat and cold, security from a wide range of wild animals both primeval and contemporary, privacy, refuge, an investment, a statement, a hobby.

Off The Map

Last fall, after two years of escalating entreaties by my girlfriend, I finally agreed to move from the city to the country. More precisely, from San Francisco to northern New Mexico, to a desert of lunar silences and nights so black that I rediscovered my childhood fear of the dark.

My First Night At The Initiation Camp

This year the millet fields had been generous and the harvest good. The hard work of collecting and transporting grain from the farm to the house roofs, where it waited to be put into the granaries, was over. Now, in the fallow dry season, the villagers turned their attention to spiritual matters — to initiation.

The Map

The scholars think they’ve got it figured out, or at least that one day they will. What a laugh! I feel like grabbing them all by their collars and shaking them, until they realize there’s nothing mathematical about the moon, nothing psychological about sex, nothing atomic about flesh. Look into a girl’s eyes and tell me she is just atoms.

Why We Are All Addicted

I maintain that the essence of addiction is craving for an experience or object to make you feel all right. It’s the craving for something other than the self, even if that something is within the realm of the mind. Addiction is fundamentally human; it affects everybody.

The Danger Of Being Environmentally Correct

(Maybe There Is No Hundredth Monkey)

In effect, our sense of individual responsibility is enlisted by those making production decisions to craft a myth of universal responsibility. For if everyone contributes equally to the problem, then we can’t hold any specific institutions or people accountable for decisions that hurt the earth.

Ghostmother

I am a woman ruled by the moon — the dark side no less than the light. A lover of monochromatic landscapes and subtle gradations, I am haunted by the shadows at the edge of the dark. Yet I cannot verify that I’ve ever encountered a ghost.

An Inventory Of Timelessness

What I’m saying is that we in the late twentieth century live not in a city or country, not on a planet, but in a collective dream. Our everyday world is one of dreamlike instantaneous changes, unpredictable metamorphoses, random violence, archetypal sex, and a threatening sense of multiple meaning.

Thorns Into Feathers

Coping With Chronic Illness

When I heard the first melancholy notes of the cello in Schumann’s A Minor Concerto, my world changed. I knew the music of illness when I heard it.