MY 
One of the oldest images in human thought is that of the house as a symbol of the human person. Long before psychologists spoke of the conscious and unconscious mind, poets, philosophers, and theologians imagined the self as a dwelling composed of many rooms, some brightly illuminated and others hidden in darkness. Continue Reading →
Why was one of the twentieth century’s greatest Surrealists spending time at a Tibetan Buddhist center in upstate New York? At the time, I didn’t know to ask. Years later, after I had become familiar with her paintings, the answer would become obvious.
I left Bard SummerScape admiring Richard Strauss’s magnificent score, the exceptional singing, and the imaginative staging. What I didn’t expect was that the opera’s bewildering story would send me back to Homer, Euripides, and the enduring mystery of Helen of Troy.Continue Reading →
Long before personal branding became a marketing strategy, Frida Kahlo had become a brand all her own. Her face now appears on clothing, coffee mugs, tote bags, cosmetics, and countless souvenirs. Yet somehow the commercialization has never diminished the emotional power of the paintings themselves.Continue Reading →
As this essay goes to press, the pandemic has unexpectedly returned to the headlines. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment right rather than answer questions from investigators examining his actions and the government’s pandemic response. Continue Reading →
They worshipped her, they painted her, they imitated her, and then they forgot her. Loie Fuller, the 19th-century dancer who inspired an extraordinary body of sculpture, drawings, photographs, and color lithographs, was captured by artists in almost every conceivable position and creation.Continue Reading →
The Lost Daughter completely took me by surprise, a quiet psychological drama whose tensions emerge so gradually that I did not realize how thoroughly it had drawn me in until I was caught inside its unsettling emotional logic.Continue Reading →
On the last day of the Kagyu Prayer Festival in Bodh Gaya, India several years ago, a very dramatic death occurred that spurred much talk and speculation. Continue Reading →
In Bodh Gaya, a Buddhist nun lived in an apartment infested with rats that emerged each night, invaded her bedroom, and turned her bed into an obstacle course.Continue Reading →
A forgotten Victorian novella found on a Brooklyn bookshelf changed the course of my life. Edwin Abbott’s Flatland is more than an ingenious mathematical fantasy. It is a meditation on perception, imagination, and the unseen possibilities that can transform a life.Continue Reading →