Moxy

“You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed. You’re never so ready to forget yourself as when you are happy. Happiness releases you from self. It is suffering and pain and misery and depression that tie you to the self. Look how conscious you are of your tooth when you have a toothache. When you don’t have a toothache, you’re not... See more

I took up gratitude some years ago when Dr. Dearani at Mayo replaced a valve in my heart and I went for a walk down the hall the next morning, thinking about my aunt and uncles who died in their 50s from the same congenital malfunction. I had come to the end of my life expectancy and was operating on gift time. It had nothing to do with good diet a... See more

Song

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Some claim the origin of song

was a war cry

some say it was a rhyme

telling the farmers when to plant and reap

don't they know the first song was a lullaby

pulled from a mother's sleep

said the old woman

A significant

factor generating my delight in being

alive this springtime

is the birdsong

that like a sweeping mesh has captured... See more

I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired with electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing ... See more