Browse Topics
Happiness
Citizens Of The Dream
You might very well be lazy, afraid of failure, and undisciplined and still write. You might lack the urge and still write. You might not be “a writer” and still write. . . . You are both obliged to develop your talent and free not to develop it. That is, you are free to acknowledge obligations but still say no to them.
June 2012Drag
Although I believe I know how to have fun (camping is fun), I have recently started to suspect that some people consider me a “drag.” I’ve begun to consider myself a drag, especially when I can’t take a measly half day off without my conscience bugging me.
November 2011
Awkward Walks With Unavailable Men
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when my wanting became a problem. Sometimes I think it was at seventeen, when I was a Mennonite girl from a dead-end dirt lane, determined to leave for the Big City, for college, for a career and money and high-heeled shoes and shorn hair, and to have absolutely nothing more to do with the hilltop Mennonites.
October 2011
Cheap Thrills
Contraband cinnamon, a coupon for a free turkey, evening constitutionals
October 2011
excerpted from
Women In Love
He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free.
July 2011excerpted from
Letters To Olga
And slowly but surely, I found myself in a very strange and wonderful state of mind: I imagined I was lying somewhere in the grass beneath a tree, doing nothing, expecting nothing, worrying about nothing, simply letting the intoxication of a hot summer day possess me.
August 2010excerpted from
The Doors Of Perception
According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But insofar as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.
July 2010The Facts Of Life
The Buddha taught that there are three principal characteristics of human existence: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction. According to the Buddha, the lives of all beings are marked by these three qualities. Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are.
April 2010In The Third Century B.C.
I’m growing fatter at each winter’s coming. / My wineglass filling up again / As I sit behind the wall of my garden.
November 2009Delayed Reactions
After the hammer slams down on your thumb / or the hurtful word penetrates, / a stunned moment follows.
October 2009
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today