THE FIRST TIME I DISCOVERED that my words had an effect on other people was when something I wrote made other people cry. The people were my fellow high-school English students, and the topic was a personal essay we’d been…
Category: Living
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
Echo (Pithyism #18)
YOU REALLY FEEL LIKE A Jewish Teacher when a former student says “This needed to be here” and gives you a rock he picked up at Masada. (Thanks, Nick. May you also be blessed to know the difference you make.)…
Pithyism #+/-1
Thank God or your equivalent that the uttermost limits of joy and misery remain mostly unexplored — and largely uncommunicated.
Two Indigent Sketches
1. HITCHHIKING THROUGH RENO IN 1985, I wandered by the green banks of the Truckee River, where a number of seen-better-days men lived in the park, in what apparently remained of their business suits. “Hey buddy, you got a second?”…
Three More Tender Words Than “I Love You”
“TAKE YOUR TIME.”
The Bright Side
IT’S ALWAYS A NICE DAY at 35,000 feet.
Advice to The Younger Self
TAKE THE WORLD AND YOUR part in it seriously, but not yourself. Never refuse anything offered, but be careful about entanglements. You’ll need computer skills, but you’ll also enjoy them. Write. Stake out early your points of honor. Dream. Then…
Pithyism #36
IF A PREGNANT WOMAN ASKS you for anything — and I mean anything, no matter how odd-sounding or inconvenient — give it to her immediately or sooner. (This rule does not necessarily apply to any other human situation.)
Thumbs Up
THE PACK ON YOUR BACK is both reassuring and cumbersome for what seems the third hour of shadeless noon as you think at a passing car, “This one will definitely stop.” (Actually, if it were really three hours you’d have…
Pithyism #210
RELIGION, OR AT LEAST JEWISH religion, and certainly a root cause of religion’s comfort, appeal and danger, is simply and little more than people doing what they like to do in the way they like and feel compelled to do…
Pithyism #3 up, 3 down
WOULDN’T YOU RATHER SEE A good game than a great hit? (Derived from a conversation on a public lament for baseball players on steroids.) (Yes, I said for.)
Pithyism #108
WITH THE ADVENT OF BLOGGING, men of letters have become men of keystrokes.