In the wake of my wife's death, one curious phenomenon involved newspapers and the news.  Whatever cells or receptor sites within them are attuned to current events had gone numb.  Actually, they had shrunk, like the human stomach after a fast.  I could take in only so much, which was very little.  In retrospect, and signaling that this phenomenon has passed, I do wonder what was going on.  Perhaps I was more tuned into the eternal, the issues that inhabit that blank spot Read more [...]

'Expression is the need of my soul,' said Archy, Don Marquis' famous cockroach. Such a simple, essential sentiment, and why can't I remember this myself? I wonder if women have an easier, more instinctive response to this need. In any case, I am experiencing the post-non-expression fallout of one particular day, yesterday. Which had superficially nothing very particular about it. Except for a private sense of letting things go, easing up on myself, advice from the Psychologist I Happen to Bump into Read more [...]

Before there were video games, but only just, in that transition period between the corporeal and the pixel, there was pinball.  At least, this is my impression.  Surely I must have played pinball.  In fact, I can see the steel ball bearing shot from a spring-loaded lever, hurtling and caroming, ricocheting and bouncing, but generally dropping, through a series of artificial obstacles.  A controlled environment, not exactly an open shot on an open range.  And one of the mysterious Read more [...]

The day begins, as most do currently, far too early, with a 3:30 AM wake-up call from the psyche.  With a reminder.  The book.  No, not the book of life, the one sealed a couple of days ago at sundown on Yom Kippur.  The other book.  The one coming out in January and authored by me.  So what, you ask?  Exactly.  So what.  Except that in my early morning musings I am in front of a group of well-wishers at the local bookstore.  And they are asking questions.  Read more [...]

The key to understanding me and Yom Kippur is that I have no real understanding of Yom Kippur. More of a flavor. My role, as Woody Allen defines it, falls into the "90% of life is showing up" rule. Which, at such times, is all that I know to do. So, let us waltz through the Jewish ceremonial space for those who, like me, have no Jewish background.  And see what we find. Or what finds us. This is the thing with matters spiritual. Pretty much a hide and seek game.The sun sets every night, or to Read more [...]

Buffie and I have emerged from Trader Joe's, now sharing our neighborly secret, that both of us never miss the samples counter, where the free taste of the day is eternally on offer.  We are now heading home, our apartments sharing a common footpath, all roads leading south.  Or is it east?  Actually, the latter is a much more useful frame of reference, the San Francisco Peninsula making some odd turns and twists as it skirts the Bay.  Buffie is full of traffic warnings.  Read more [...]