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Distractions

Reading at work, listening to music during labor, swatting gnats while meditating

The Open Marketplace of the End Times

Today I remembered the last time I looked out the window. This was months ago. Was I braver then—or more childlike? No, not childlike, as children do not look out their windows either. More naive. More stupidly hopeful.

Fragments from a Pilgrimage

I came to plunder the past and found, appropriately, only a bit of play history. What did I expect?

No Politics

Rabbi Shmuley went over the ground rules: “We are here to learn from each other, not to argue. Certainly not to compete. Don’t deny anyone’s experience. Don’t deny anyone’s subjectivity. And, of course, no politics.”

The Good End of Pleasant Street

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

My Bowstring Heart

On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

Practice Losing Everything

I challenged my students to interrogate their own religious inheritance, and I spoke frequently of the “ethics of faith.” I asked whether they’d arrived at faith through honest inquiry or by suppressing their doubts.

The Coast of Nowhere II

Sleet and black rain / pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn / that reaches through the window, hissing, / Your heart never was a bird let alone / a bright-red singing one.

Eating Free

Perhaps this isn’t the case at all Embassy Suites, but in Flagstaff, Arizona, between 5 and 7 pm, the hotel provides unlimited snacks and beer, gratis. I’ll repeat that: unlimited. Granted, I never imbibed more than three Michelobs and a cubic yard of Chex mix, but still. The possibility of unlimited is delectable.

The Fourth Estate

Sheila Coronel on the Future of News Media

I don’t believe we’re confined to the media business models that we know. As the information landscape evolves, there will still be journalism about what is happening now, and that will help people in the future who are trying to make sense of it. This work has value.