Old, Learned, Respectable Bald Heads
I saw this book on my shelf, opened to a page, and found this– But that is the sort of thing we can expect from the Abstract Owl, the dried-up Western descendant of the Confucianist…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Books To Read before We Die
Recently, I gave a bibliophilic friend the new book by James Mustich, 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List. It is a delight to peruse the tome, as the author and his…
Be Here Now: American Sadhana and the Search for the Real
If you’ve ever … put your faith in a guru traveled to India and were blown away and never took a single drug recited a mantra throughout the day met your future wife at a…
Looking Ahead to a Spring Trip to Washington, D.C.
I want to listen to your tales of triumph and disaster I want to massage your feet, long oppressed by heels I want to be present to all you cannot say I want to be…
The Bloom of Youth
I came across this photo of Hedy Wachenheimer (later Epstein) from one of my files; this is likely from when she was in her teens.
Thought for the End of One Year and the Beginning of Another
“Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other’s offenses? Let us go to the…
Saturday Share the Wealth with Our Diane di Prima Class: Making the World Bearable
What I saw then was this fairly obvious faculty of art: that it goes on, it lasts a bit longer that our frail human lives—it offers comfort. The vision is more enduring than our persons—it…
Gratitude/899
A predictably wonderful thing about late December–getting to see Thuy Khuu when she comes back for a visit.
Neither Conformism Nor Eccentricity
John Armstrong, Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007 Almost twelve years ago I read this book, and the themes of Bildung and mastery were most…
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/10
111. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. –Simone Weil 222. When [Arthur Waley] was at work, all else was eliminated. –Ivan Morris 333. Whenever I…