Culture Meditations

How many of us have felt that we’re only earning our money—really working—if we’re suffering? Even if you’ve never felt that way personally, how many of us think that’s what America wants us to believe? That if we’re not suffering, our work is not valuable, won’t be paid for, and we’re f*qed. We all know

I’ve been pretty quiet since Memorial Day because I have very strong feelings about what white folks should and should not be doing in the Black Lives Matter movement at this stage. My point of view is carefully honed from the last three decades I’ve spent learning about what marginalized people in the States go

Last week was about myths and values on the epic scale because this moment is colossal. The virus is a stasis across continents, across ages, across the scopes of time and space. And yet… it’s all so intimate. My son and I have been holed up for weeks. The only person we see is a

… isn’t immortality. It’s money. There’s a TED Talk about it. About how we’ve all just agreed to predicate a great deal of our everyday activities on the notion that a rectangular piece of green paper means value. That it has value, that we need it to do business, buy stuff, stock the fridge, get

For the most part, I don’t think most of us know we’re going to die. And for the most part, I don’t think we know that we’re truly, deeply, intrinsically connected, either. I found out I was going to die when I was 34 because I was diagnosed with a cancer that had persisted for

I’m the tail end of generation X and have explained that experience to millennials like this:when I was applying for college, I had to mail away for catalogues and write essays out on paper and mail ‘em in, and wait for paper letters of acceptance. My first week of school, my parents had moved to

2019 was a critical point in our collective acknowledgement that we have poisoned our Earth. Perhaps 2020 is the year we reach critical mass in acknowledging that we have poisoned ourselves. This is something I have experience with. The poison tree is easy to plant. Too often the poison tree is what we throw over

Did we plant a Poison Tree? Will we plant a Medicine Tree?

“Oh, no, Mama! Loving is Hard!” Relationships are hard. And vital. Vital like our vital signs. And like pulse and heart rate and blood pressure, the conditions of a relationship can tell us the very essence of where we’re at, who we are, where we’re going. I’ve said that Relationships are crucial (on the About

Twenty years ago, I set out to become a teacher of the literatures that have given me the most—meaning, clarity, purpose. I said I wanted to ensure that these important voices were heard and learned from. A year ago, I realized that a lot of emerging artists around me were also saying important things that