I’ve written about love before, and my words don’t really amount to much compared to how love feels. I’m not alone in writing about love, of course; it’s the stuff of rock and roll, Shakespeare, a thousand poets, romance novels, crime drama plots and notes... Continue

Sitting here in the “land of the free” while much of the world struggles with democracy and reorganizing society, I can’t help but contemplate the meaning of freedom. Tossed around liberally by conservatives, freedom as a word seems to have morphed into a convenient catch-all... Continue

“You win a while, and then it’s done, your little winning streak.” - Leonard Cohen You may think you are a loser: full of self-criticism, disliking your looks and your body, eating badly, drinking and smoking, not sleeping enough, ignoring your kids, slacking off at... Continue

Of all the difficult things in the world, watching myself get old and decrepit will surely rank among the toughest. Unless I keel over and suddenly expire, fate dictates I will likely suffer indignities of pain, weak bones, altered gait, low energy, debilitating disease, and/or... Continue

In their present form people have been knocking around this planet for something like 200,000 years and over that span of time many conclusions have about people have been made. Such conclusions are by no means consistent or logical. Different cultures have arrived at their... Continue

Previous to the last 10,000 years during which farming, agriculture and establishing fixed cities emerged as dominant social structures, human beings lived by hunting and gathering, living in modestly sized groups, picking up camp and moving with seasonal food sources.  All that changed when three... Continue

Though I moved to California in 1968 when I was nineteen and made it my home, in no small part I’m still a “New Yawkah.” Even so, I’m slowly losing New York. I remember the unseasonably frigid October night when I decided to move to... Continue

The defining character of the modern age is its relationship to acquiring knowledge: the idea that knowledge is power, specifically power over nature and others. This orientation distinguishes modernity from antiquity’s belief in knowledge as its own reward and wisdom ultimately found “in here” not... Continue

In a previous column about money I wrote about symbolic and imaginary mind, and its place in human experience and psychology. The symbolic is related to language. Through language we form thoughts about our perceptions of reality and convey them to others. Our direct experience... Continue