Somewhere between what is hidden and what is seen: A matchbook found at the bottom of a box of paints from my days on the Lower East Side in the 1970s. In Jane Hirshfield‘s slim but wisdom-packed book, Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry, she includes a poem written in 1000 CE by […]
Vladimir Nabokov
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Discreteness
A watercolor by Renee Collins, from my collection. I don’t know the name that Renee originally gave it, but I’ve always referred to it as “Leaky Margins.” If you spend a fair amount of time online, you have probably come up against The Membrane. It functions a bit like a cell wall, as the boundary […]
Humility, with Humor
Something happens when we face the truth about ourselves. For one thing, there is no room for pomposity, arrogance, or self-absorption. More than one person has pointed out how closely conjoined “humility” is with “humor.” A sense of humor, like a true sense of humility, involves ruthless honesty about who we are, without disguise or […]