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Visions

It just bursts from me like a thunderclap, only there’s never any clap when my Vision grabs hold. It’s like I fall asleep, but my eyes stay open and the hand holding the pen just moves over the paper all by itself.

December 1995

I keep imagining that someday I’ll get caught up: write those letters, read those books. What a great imagination!

Memory’s Tailor

“My name is Alexandr Davidowich Berman,” he wrote in the space above Lenin’s vest. “My mother’s name was Sophie. She knew Hebrew and gave me my first needle; we made a suit for a doll.

The End Of The Day

A west-facing window and Scotch, the Sacred Order of the Kitchen, photos of the summer solstice

School’s Out

An Interview With John Taylor Gatto

The first thing I discovered was that the types of learning that are measured by standardized tests are not real learning at all. To do well on a standardized reading test, for example, does not mean that you read well. There are approximately 150 categories of information that a complex passage of reading delivers, and the standardized test covers approximately six of those categories over and over again.

Sunbeams

Every morning the New York Times is out on the front step, and I wake up and get my tea and decide whether to meditate first or read the New York Times first. If the New York Times is first, by the time I’m to page four, I am already engaged in the pain and the suffering, the greed and the fear. If I meditate first and come into a kind of spacious awareness, I have a perspective that gives me some leverage so that I don’t just keep drowning in it. It doesn’t mean nonaction; it means that the action comes from a quieter space inside.

Ram Dass

The Contrary Farmer

The truth is that farming at its worst is no more physically punishing than operating a restaurant, brokering commodities on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, or training for the Olympics.

Batrender

From my perch twenty yards beneath the cave, I’ve a perfect vantage point to watch the bats emerge at twilight, streaming out of the mouth like musical notes from a horn.

Breakfast At The Victory

In the Victory there was no such thing as The Last Word. Truths, conclusions, absolutes — all had about the same permanence as the steamy smells that circulated in the Victory and drifted out onto the street.

How Lucky We Are

I’m not sure I like any of the three lines that always work for me. They’re all from the “Did you ever notice?” category of jokes, an overused category, but one with which even rookie comedians can kill the most sober of audiences.