What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.
Category Archive: 1948
There’s still racism. Western Europe… has taken the native cultures of the Americas, the African cultures, the Asian civilization and lumped them together into The Others.
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa.
We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it’s against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don’t talk about them, or we don’t talk about them as much.
When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world, and our senses evolved as scouts who bridge that divide and provide volumes of information, warnings and rewards.
Because we can’t escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.
When I have an argument with someone, even with someone I am not very close with, I can’t sleep at night thinking about it. It’s terrible. But I still manage speak out frankly because I have also been gifted with the ability to read people. I can sense when they start to get irritated with me, and then, I shift.
Let’s detox our cluttered academic brain. That’s what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It’s being able to let in call letters from the poetry universe.
My best friend in medical school was a magician. And we were shown an X-ray of a sword-swallower, and I tried it and failed. Then I got a sword-swallower as a patient, and he taught me.