“I see that all of my work amounts to nothing, that my ten volumes aren’t worth anything!” —Guy de Maupassant, after reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich David Barsamian: You had something in mind in…
After coming across this acknowledgement of influence, a goal for this spring–re-engaging with Tolstoy.
Opera excepted, I never asked myself, in those early years of reading literature in translation, what I was missing. It was as if I felt it were my job, as a passionate reader, to see…
In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….
ahamkara [aham, “I”; kara, “maker”] Self-will, the ego mask, the principle in people which makes them feel separate from others. — Diana Morrison, A Glossary of Sanskrit from The Spiritual Tradition of India The Death of Ivan…
At McGurks I asked Siobhán, “Did I ever tell you about the ‘Meanwhiles?’” “I don’t think so.” “Back in the days and nights When The Book of Mev wasn’t The Book of Mev (I was…
For Lindsay Morning Aspiration: Upon first waking up in the morning, recite this gatha from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Waking up this morning, I smile: Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to…
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. –Ralph Waldo Emerson In the late 1940s David Dunn wrote an article The reader response was overwhelming…