In 1985, I spent several months living on the island of Java, in Yogyakarta, having traveled there with a partner in the evening of our intimacy. I sat out nights with our mutual friend Muller, a Sumatran who was studying at the University, on the grass mats of Jalan Malioboro, smoking Kretek cigarettes and drinking …
It is nine in the morning. With those first words, I have given you the freshness, the low rays of the sun, the clear skies of so many mornings. It is Saturday: I have given you some stillness and freedom from Purpose. There is the faintest breeze, in fact, which plays around the drying …
tech • nol • o • gy | tek'näl?j? | noun (pl. -gies) ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek tekhnologia 'systematic treatment,' from tekhn? 'art, craft' + -logia 'knowledge', originally in reference to grammar. In the mid-1800s applied to industry and industrial works. Finally, circa 1964, 'High Technology' was coined for the overtures of the …
The moon poured its smiling face silver over the yard, and you moved your hand an inch, then another inch, then held my cool fingers in yours that were so warm.
"I was born in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, two blocks off the rail line – before it was abandoned, and then reclaimed for pedestrians and bicycles – so that the 7:45 and the 8:30 made audible bookends to my bedtime, first calling ahead, then calling behind, and finally the stuttered step of the cars …
Ai, que dificuldade. Sabe, gente, que só nos terrenos brasileiros é possível viver como brasileiro. Não importa a vontade, não importa a ídioma empregada, não importa o abraço, não importa a comida… se torna brasileiro quem pisa na terra brasileira. Abra a porta carioca, deite na cama paulista, seja tocado pelo vento porto-alegrense… aí gente, …
The crickets are loud outside my window, because outside my window, the grass is high. Life, in fact, in terms both general and specific, has got a lead on me, and the kind of maintenance my neighbors would like to see in my yard and which they cannot see and would not see within my …
Many Buddhist traditions share a specific practice for opening the eyes, opening the eyes of the heart. If you follow the path of enlightenment that Gautama Buddha walked, one who wishes to be free of entangling thoughts and desires — desire for the next and better car, the other better house, a different and better …
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. — For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains aren't waterfalls yet, in …
A certain slant of light or the softness of the breeze tells you; the brightness of the birdsong tells you it is morning. Most of the world is waking now, refreshed, while the night shift yawns and paws its way to bed. The light turns green. The light turns red. The morning traffic pauses. As …
If you are familiar with the Tarot — not the arcane, mystifying deck of cards employed by lesser guides, but the cards whose images represent archetypal moments and movements in life — you will recognize its patterns and elements in places and phases of your own life. They were, after all, the result of many …
In an introduction to his poem "Technology", my son, during his eighth-grade graduation speech, wondered aloud if our technical advances were the hallmark of a New Age, or in fact its death-knell. His words rang with youthful and categorical vigor which is harder to come by in middle age, and so strident that they are …