Essays

My Two Cents

The Beauty of Hitting Bottom

As a recovering alcoholic of 32 years, I’m always delighted to run across a fresh insight about addiction, such as the following from David Milch, fabulous writer of one of my favorite westerns, the HBO series “Deadwood,” set in raw, lawless South Dakota circa 1870, where you can hear the word “cocksucker” more times than you ever thought possible while marveling at the Shakespearean beauty of the exposition it embellishes and the characters who speak it.  Anyway, Mr. Milch’s ability to turn a phrase relating to addiction is equally memorable, if short on profanity:

Evidence that you’re close to hitting bottom:

Your circumstances are deteriorating faster

than you can lower your standards.

Read More

(From the Archive 2011) Choosing Love When it Comes to Chicks

I’m not exactly sure what it means to be a feminist, but I assume it includes considering females beyond gender stereotypes.  If that’s reasonably close, then the first big feminist choice I remember making occurred in 1957 when I decked Kathy McMinn as she was racing for home. Read More

Up There in the Gift Hall of Fame

 

A question, chewable, rewarding, maybe forever:

What’s the most important thing

you’ve learned in this lifetime

(so far)? Read More

Honoring Trump the Tornado

Breath of fresh air not withstanding, an opportunity will be missed if Trump’s eviction from his rental on Pennsylvania Ave is considered simply the end of a national nightmare.   Read More

We Are Like Silkworms

Election Day 2020.

Person, family, nation––every manifestation of humanity operates the same.

We are like silkworms; 

we make the thread out of our own substance

and spin the cocoon,

and in the course of time are imprisoned inside.

 

But this is not forever.  

In that cocoon we shall develop spiritual Realization, 

and like the butterfly come out free. Read More

"I honor that we are killing the earth for the same reason I consider being an alcoholic a privilege: it is a doorway to the profound self-understanding required to make truly healthy choices."

The Essay: Honoring the Killing of the Earth