Stones Of Light

An Interview With David Freidel

One of the wonderful dimensions of shamanism for me is its unleashing of the imagination, the intuition, and the emotion of a person, rather than allowing the banality of the material world to overwhelm one’s life. Making the life experience conform to the imagination is a great thing, and it’s something I would like to see our society pursue actively. Instead of simply consuming fantasy, we should generate fantasy, generate alternative understandings.

The Danger Of Being Environmentally Correct

(Maybe There Is No Hundredth Monkey)

In effect, our sense of individual responsibility is enlisted by those making production decisions to craft a myth of universal responsibility. For if everyone contributes equally to the problem, then we can’t hold any specific institutions or people accountable for decisions that hurt the earth.

An Inventory Of Timelessness

What I’m saying is that we in the late twentieth century live not in a city or country, not on a planet, but in a collective dream. Our everyday world is one of dreamlike instantaneous changes, unpredictable metamorphoses, random violence, archetypal sex, and a threatening sense of multiple meaning.

The Map

The scholars think they’ve got it figured out, or at least that one day they will. What a laugh! I feel like grabbing them all by their collars and shaking them, until they realize there’s nothing mathematical about the moon, nothing psychological about sex, nothing atomic about flesh. Look into a girl’s eyes and tell me she is just atoms.

Why We Are All Addicted

I maintain that the essence of addiction is craving for an experience or object to make you feel all right. It’s the craving for something other than the self, even if that something is within the realm of the mind. Addiction is fundamentally human; it affects everybody.

Ghostmother

I am a woman ruled by the moon — the dark side no less than the light. A lover of monochromatic landscapes and subtle gradations, I am haunted by the shadows at the edge of the dark. Yet I cannot verify that I’ve ever encountered a ghost.

Chautauqua

Zeke’s too good. It isn’t healthy. You need vices to let go of when you get a problem — things you can drop, like a tail on a kite, when the breeze gets light and you find yourself falling.

Glide Path

They had circled for fifteen minutes before heading into the airport from the east, over the Hudson, across the turnpike. They should have come in from the north or south.

Suzy Joins The Sex Club

I look at my kids and my husband and think of all the things we are together, and I think, isn’t it odd to be willing to risk all this so I can fuck some guy who washes dishes and whispers nasty things in my ear? 

Kicking The Habit

After The Laying-On Of Hands For Jonathon, Dying Of Cancer

Selected Poems

Those Men

Those Bodies