I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
When the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) passed, it was like Christmas morning for those of us concerned about the climate crisis: we spent the coming weeks scouring the bill, finding new “gifts” like $27 billion to establish a national green bank…
Too much talk of revolution
makes me hungry, and there
is little in the fridge that makes
one believe in a better world:
By forming OpenAI as a nonprofit, the founders–which included Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn–hoped to avoid what happens to nearly all venture-backed companies: the insatiable profit motive soon overwhelms any stated concerns for social good.
Leaves gather like un- sold goods. Need help, asks the rake. Just browsing, I say.
Both the atheist and the believer have it wrong.
We are not mere bodies, nor do we have souls.
Heaven would be a room strewn with books
and nary an errand to distract from reading;
It’s easy to look out at the world and despair, to ask what point there is in donating to nonprofits, voting, protesting, calling your elected officials, writing Op-Eds. There is no shortage of anecdotes and pithy quotes to rebut that […]
“Children found ‘butchered’ in Israeli kibbutz…” – CNN
I dream a rocket’s aftermath smells of cracked pepper,
that it sprays not blood and shrapnel but mint leaves,
ice clinking in delicate hand-blown glass; that its
thunder is a hundred-thousand bumblebees come to
pollinate a black-and-white world, devoid of flowers…
Not the shaded table by the pool
where I point out a hummingbird eating nectar
and my son asks, “You mean like I eat pizza?”
It has been a difficult summer for people directly impacted by the climate crisis, of course, but also for those of us who have been spared the fires, floods, and extreme heat yet are nevertheless terrified by what’s happening. Some […]