Experiencing Deep Time

Brian Swimme On The Story Of The Universe

The universe story isn’t just about human beings, but also about trees, for example. You can’t fully understand trees if you understand only their hundred-year life cycle. You’ve got to go back to the very beginning of the universe. Now, that’s what I mean by cosmology as empowerment. When we realize that the world we live in today is a creation of an energy and power that is that deep and that old, it helps us get away from the idea that we’re the managers of the planet and know all about what’s going on here.

Alice Laughs Last

Alice doesn’t smile when she opens the door. She doesn’t have a lot to smile about, and, more than that, to smile would be to grant me points I have not yet earned. At this juncture, I am still a tentacle of authority, reaching out to invade the nominal sanctity of her home.

The Religion Of The Ad

Before entering first-grade science class, and before entering, in any real way, into our religious ceremonies, a child will have soaked in thirty thousand advertisements. The time our teenagers spend absorbing ads is more than their total stay in high school.

Solstice

His mother is blessed with a dull acceptance that cushions her suffering, but Arnell, her youngest son, is bright, and this winter will leave its mark on him. 

My Stupid Harmony

The Wish Family was my family dressed in red-white-and-blue outfits, performing songs written by my father and played by my older brother Todd on our secondhand piano, my sister Mare on a convicted uncle’s guitar, and my little brother Jay on a snare drum so beaten its skin had been taped.

Photographs by John Milisenda

I have been photographing my family for more than thirty years. The pictures here are of my mother, Rose, and my younger brother, Dennis. My father, Sal, died in 1991.

Clothespins In Winter

A Common Life

In The Fertility Clinic