As the pandemic rages, we are forced to acknowledge a world of beings too tiny to see. Though we’ve known since third grade science that they are there — bugs, germs, viruses — for most of us, most of the time, they are no more real than fairies or leprechauns. Suddenly, in this most scientific […]
Read More The invisible danger of Covid 19: An ordinary world made terrifyingly “other”My two hound mixes have been dead for a couple of years now, and all I’m left with is this terrier-chihuahua something-or-other who occasionally looks more like a cartoon rendering than an actual dog. Battle-scarred, bug-eyed, and half-deaf, she’s adapted over the years by pushing more and more of her consciousness into her nose. And […]
Read More My old dog’s nose: On equanimity and aging“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” Wittgenstein For the second night in a row, my dog, restless from storms, has woken me up. Her routine involves walking on my sternum and neck, and panting midnight dog breath onto my innocent face until I escort her downstairs for an interlude of Netflix […]
Read More Egocentric cats and narcissistic humans: the mysterious minds of othersIt is five in the morning and the cat demands to be let out, and in, and out again through the double-doors that lead to the freezing, still dark screened-in porch. I have complied patiently each time, and then re-situated myself cross-legged on the floor to rediscover the rhythm of my breath. Nothing matters more […]
Read More Feral cats and meditation: Coming to terms with my own wild selfI remember a party in the early 90s where I met a woman who, within three minutes, was recounting her recent abortion and breakup with her boyfriend. Even against a backdrop of feminist camaraderie, this instant revelation was startling enough to make me wonder if she was drunk precisely because it is a social violation […]
Read More The stupidity of happy people: Authenticity, suffering and personal disclosureThe basic existential notion that we are defined by what we do seems intuitively plausible. How I speak, dress, and move through the world is a better way than most to make sense of my identity, of who I, and others, take me to be. When I posit my very selfhood as being reflected through […]
Read More The Tao of being one’s clumsy self: The satisfaction of living self-consciouslyWhen I was a kid, Alvin was a dog in my neighborhood with an underbite and a pushed-in snout. Mostly soft gray, but with wiry patches of whisker-like black fur sprouting up here and there, everyone agreed that this dog was ugly. Everyone, that is, except Alvin, who wandered from house to house with the […]
Read More Queer style and aesthetic mindfulness: Breaking the habit of being ourselves
