Eric and I were in Japan over the holidays and my cousins needed a place to stay while they visited some family in the North East, so of course we offered to have them stay in our apartment. When we got home, they were long gone, but the house was a complete mess. They had left behind jewelry and hairbands, there were sticky patches and crumbs on the floor, it was…
I was reading the news this morning and saw an article about 800 immigrants who traveled vast distances to respond to a court summons that ended up being fake. ICE issued them as part of a tactic to circumvent people’s legal right to a court hearing to seek asylum. My heart ached for these people, many poor, spending time, money, missing work, all to show up to a fake court…
Eric and I were traveling in Japan over the 2018/2019 holidays and we decided to spend a few days in Naoshima, an island in the Seto Sea famous for its many museums and art instillations. Eric and I went into an instillation, Backside of the Moon, by the artist James Turrell and the piece absolutely blew me away. Spoiler alert here: I am about to describe he piece, so if you…
Last night I was in bed in my Manhattan loft fuming — the neighbors had lit an illegal fire, in a condemned chimney, and smoke was pouring into my apartment. For me, this type of situation is my worst fear, a reflection of my greatest sense of injustice; people being inconsiderate and breaking the rules, resulting in an affront to my personal safety. This situation felt particularly affronting because it…
It was November 2018 and I had managed, by coincidence, to escape smoke from the fires raging in Northern California by a single day. My flight back to New York from an important event I had been working out in San Francisco departed early in the morning, by afternoon fires had created all kinds of delays and cancelations. Smoke filled the skies of San Francisco, air quality went to the…
I had been reading an article about how precarious life is for people living in rural China who were not issued government identification cards. Without the ids, they struggled to find work, they were unable to travel or to access medical care, education or state aid. It sort of shocked me that something so small — an id card — can make the difference between a life of ease and…
Eric and I were watching one of those reality home building shows today; a couple had worked hard, had long and successful careers, and were now building their dream home, on their dream plot of land. Only the land they chose was the top of a cliff, overhanging the ocean, with sandy earth that was sliding away. When the engineer came to make a first assessment, he told them the…
This post shares some highlights of a daily, self-assigned, homework exercise to explore the role of imagination in my day-to-day life. This blog is a direct continuation of the previous 2 posts; if you haven’t already done so, please head back and read those before proceeding. I was sitting in a park today and there was a free concert preformed by an Orthodox Jewish band. They were singing in Hebrew,…
This post shares some highlights of a daily, self-assigned, homework exercise to explore the role of imagination in my day-to-day life. This blog is a direct continuation of the previous post, The Tyranny of Imagination; if you haven’t already done so, please head back and read it before proceeding. I was planning a little weekend getaway with Eric. I thought to myself, this is what I think my retirement/perfect future with…
After the Kathina ceremony, while I was helping clean-up at the Wat, I started talking with LP Nut about managing my anxiety. Something he said really hit me: Everything I worry about — my cancer-de-jour, financial ruin, heart attacks, house fires, a life without Eric — it all comes from my imagination. My dis-ease arises in myself (thanks #4). Not quite buying the premise, I retorted that there are events in life…