From "cannot imagine" to "will not accept"; from "will not surrender" to "can never forget". The layers and levels we uncover in meeting this life challenge our small comforts. If we meet the surface, and draw it aside like a curtain that veils our senses, we reveal richer colors to our sight, intensify the sensation …
I picture a circle of relatives, drawn together by circumstance, from distances and activities that kept the majority mere echoes to one another, voices from the past, children's faces, simple times. There is a circle of relatives standing around a hole cut into the earth, gestures turned to ashes, words turned to dust. And in that gathering of grief, …
One of the great strengths of the human psyche is its ability to create structures where there appears to be chaos, to build shelter in a storm of metaphorical proportion, and raise walls in the perceived world which are duplicated in physical form around us. The walls of our houses go up, and we count on them to protect …
My daughter called this evening; in fact, she called several times today. I miss you, Daddy, her words said. I am sad, said her voice. And that textured, tangible pain somewhere deeper within her rose up and troubled her mind, and she began to speak of things that aren't, and imagined things that never were. …
Robin Chase, Founder of ZipCar and MIT-trained scientist, on transportation and communication networks. It is a far greater challenge to have and to be without, to open the hands, than it is to live without and be without. The river of life sees scarcity, and through those eyes, the hands that claim a prize reluctantly …
A phrase often heard in physical training programs, from triathletes to bicyclists to climbers to yogis, is "working your edge." No matter what level of experience we have attained in a given sport, there is always a level of activity or mental acuity beyond that which we are familiar. There is always a more open …
"… hope she is feeling better. Have a good night yourself." The ember of the day fading, so the small electric sparks that lead from corner to corner all the way home are now apparent, where before their minor lights were lost in the grander, warmer rays of the sun. A friend departs. The engine …
A walk through the Boston Common in the fall of 2005. Our nation was still numbed and dumbed into the facile acceptance of a war that was not a war; a police action where no one managed the police; an act of mercy where there was no mercy. The only way to follow such a …
… and so all follows water’s path, from cloud to peak, from heights to valleys, from valleys to the sea; follows through channels that life itself creates, in currents at times quickened at times slowed by degrees of its descent. The selfsame wave that rises, falls; the selfsame lightning separating droplet from the whole, sees …
Today unlike other Thanksgiving holidays I find myself alone. The day began in silence, shrouded in fog from the eastern seaboard; it passed quietly in a town whose shopdoors shut tightly against profit and house doors opened wide in favor of family; and ended in fog from the eastern seaboard, backlit in a dusty red, …
Our habit of looking backward is only matched by our desire to grow, keep growing forever, perhaps; or to look forward at the vast horizon and never see it rush toward us, not feel the edge and the bright light or the pure darkness beyond. Amazing how an event from childhood can reach into the …
By heaven and the night star! And what shall teach thee which is the night star? The piercing star. Over every soul there is a watcher… We find ourselves through an effort of discovery. That we are all born into this life, with years of uncovering to follow, is simple, and fact. The events in …