The invisible danger of Covid 19: An ordinary world made terrifyingly “other”

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 […]

My old dog’s nose: On equanimity and aging

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 […]

Egocentric cats and narcissistic humans: the mysterious minds of others

“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 […]

Feral cats and meditation: Coming to terms with my own wild self

It 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 […]

The stupidity of happy people: Authenticity, suffering and personal disclosure

I 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 […]

The Tao of being one’s clumsy self: The satisfaction of living self-consciously

The 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 […]

Self-reinvention in 2020: Harnessing the power of forgetting

In many accounts of personal identity, there’s an emphasis on the critical role of memory to lash together, and hold firmly in place, our sense of who we are. In the midst of the unrelenting and inexorable changes, memory provides a sense of consistency, both to ourselves and others, assurance that who I am now […]