Browse Topics

Sunbeams

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Henri Matisse

Backlighting

Alice’s husband was a man constantly in motion, and now that he has returned as a blue jay he is not much different. If anything, he is more nervously energetic than ever.

Amazing Conversations

All my life I’ve heard the expression: a photograph doesn’t lie. But the real truth is that photographs do in fact lie about some things, and not about others. Is this what Diane Arbus meant when she wrote, “A photograph is a secret about a secret?”

Selected Poems

Where I Am Now

I’m sitting at my desk watching the moon rise over the Berkshires; I’m in an apartment; I’m not in California

Hard Labor

Thoreau And The Meaning Of Work

More than any other commonplace notion, Thoreau attacked (largely through satire) his fellows’ commonplace notions about work. “Economy” is the first and largest chapter of Walden, and Thoreau gives the subject such primary consideration because he saw work consuming people’s lives before they had much of a chance to live, before they had enough time to reflect on the relationship of work to life for themselves. To Thoreau, the problem of finding one’s right work and integrating it into other proper demands on one’s life was a challenge that needed to be tackled early and with great energy if young adults weren’t going to step blindly into traps that were indeed much easier to step into than to get out of.

Selected Poems

Ruminations On The Great Peace March

There must be many creative things one can do or statements one can make with a million signatures, but the most important moment in the life of a signature may be just when it is signed and the most important effect, however infinitesimal, may be on the signer. Today some people signed their names to a petition calling for nothing less than global nuclear disarmament, and joined their names with hundreds of thousands of others. Even if they turn right around and “forget” about it, does that render it an insignificant act? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Being Peace

Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We also need to be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time. Does it require a special effort to enjoy the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. We don’t need to travel to China in order to enjoy the sky.

Krishnamurti Remembered

Two People Taking Shelter In The Rain | From The Writings Of Krishnamurti

Two People Taking Shelter In The Rain | To live in truth is to live in the moment, to be dynamically in step with it without gathering in the residue which he calls time — thought, memory, the past — and equates with falsehood.

From The Writings Of Krishnamurti | Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretense that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward.