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December 1994

Table Manners

The full-page ads by big corporations proclaim peace on earth, when all they really want is another piece of the earth.

The Little Bit

When you’re a child, you have the little bit and it has you. You throw it up and clap your hands. Your father momentarily catches it, but it is yours in your little animal eyes, your tender knees, the way a banana unwraps in your small hands, unzips as you slowly pull down the peel and reveal the soft, pale fruit.

Sunbeams

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Alan Watts

Sunbeams

All of life is a foreign country.

Jack Kerouac

Us And Them

Time was when I knew the racists were the lunch-counter owners who refused to serve blacks, the warmongers were the generals who planned wars and ordered the killing of innocent people, and the polluters were the industrialists whose factories fouled the air, water, and land. I was a good guy, boycotting, marching, and sitting-in to protest the actions of the bad guys.

Don’t Stop

Sunbeams

Whatever you say about God you should be able to say standing over a pit full of burning babies.

Elie Wiesel

A Primer On Forgiveness

It might be a lot easier to forgive someone if only he or she would show signs of changing. The paradox is that we are unlikely to see signs of change in others until we have forgiven them.

Ode To The Jacuzzi At The 23rd St. Y

The Sentient Garden

The more I learn about my garden, the less objective I feel about it. Now that I can rattle off the Latin names and vital statistics of so many of my landscape plants, you might think I would regard them as botanical specimens, each possessed of a unique genetic recipe and species-specific traits. Call me sentimental: I think of them as friends.