FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, a group of friends has made an annual equinoctial hike to a secret location for the sole purpose of … well, I can’t really say, since what fun is a secret society if you don’t…
Tag: people
Ones I have known, if even tangentially.
Poker Face
WE WERE FIVE MEN PLAYING draw poker. “Ante up, gentlemen,” said R. “Nickel apiece.” The cards went round once, twice, thrice. B coughed. T took a sip of his Cuba Libre. R sent the cards round again. And again.
Compassionings
IT IS PRECISELY AT THAT moment when compassion seems most remote that it is most greatly needed. This principle is easier spoken than implemented — what isn’t? — but holds true not only for the individual, who is buffeted by…
Free Metaphor: “Don’t Poke The Squid”
STUCK FOR AN ANALOGY WHEN your well-intendeds provoke a horrible mess that you should have known better than to bother with? Then “Don’t Poke The Squid.” Squid are lovely, largely inoffensive creatures who flash and lurk throughout the ocean’s vasty…
Something Else About Archetypes and Inevitability
ANOTHER THOUGHT ABOUT STEVE’S DEATH: A social molecule is a group of co-creators of a private but shared reality — a sort of living group-mythos inexplicable to those outside its specific bounds but real as air to those within. When…
Pithyism #99
WE ARE IN TROUBLE IF our need to be heard exceeds our need to understand — or to be understood.
Of Archetypes and Inevitability
IF YOU BELIEVE IN AN afterlife, then one reason my friend Steve Territo died yesterday is to hold the good tables for the rest of us. And if you knew Steve, you know why that’s apt: I don’t have one…
Sigh, Kitty, Sigh
IF ONLY WE COULD TEACH the cat the meaning of “wait five minutes” …
Harlan’s Secret
“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in…
Sorting Debbie
IN THE WAKE OF SINGER and prolific synagogue-music innovator Debbie Friedman, I find myself mourning her death but ambivalent about her legacy. The mourning: If you worship at most “progressive” (i.e., non-Orthodox) North American synagogues, you’re familiar with her work…
Vicaritor Rex (noun)
ONE WHO OR THAT WHICH provides a satisfying and compelling sense of the little guy “getting his own back.” (See: David, Goliath and; Slater, Steven; Man, Tank.)
“What do YOU like about being a spiritual leader?”
THIS QUESTION WAS POSED TO me by a friend who’s considering the path. Since I have some small experience with the subject, and some readers have some interest in it, I’m posting my reply here and will be absolutely unoffended…