Novelist and Storyteller
I wrote this article for the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1996 after four trips to South Africa. I had the great fortune to interview the major players in the movement to include sexual orientation in the new constitution. Unfortunately, this article is not currently on-line. The Bay Guardian plans to open up archives of …
Continue reading "South Africa’s Gay Rights–San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 22, 1996"
We believe in forward progress, that all will incrementally get better in life. It's a very American belief. We see a straight line ahead moving upwards and cling to this notion. One more time this is an illusion of perfection. That there is only one direction. And when it appears that life does not conform …
The question of zen is what now? Not what's next as in I'm bored now what do I do, but what occurs next in our perceptions of life around us. What now is the recognition that in any moment, however one subdivides that into seconds or milliseconds, until we die there is something next. It …
Impermanence, that was the word that kept coming to me yesterday and today roaming the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and a host of smaller temples (already impermanent to my memory.) Angkor Thom, meaning Great City, had a population of over one million in the 1200s, making it the largest city in the world …
Continue reading "Where Have All the Buddha Heads Gone (in Angkor Wat?)"
Buddha is big here, obviously, super big. So big that the world's largest Buddha statue is being constructed on a hillside over looking Thimphu. But that is not what I mean about being big. I mean big as imbued in people's lives at all levels. Officially Buddhist temples and the religious hierarchy are part of …
Continue reading "You Can’t Take the Buddha Out of the Bhutanese"
It is 4 am and we are already in our car headed back to Paro from Punakha where we famously met the King and Queen the day before. 4 am because the road is closed between 8 and 10 am or later for construction and an early departure will guarantee we will easily make it …
It is always a wondrous day when you eat pancakes. Even more so when you thought you finished a small breakfast and unannounced one more plate with some pancakes, thinly sliced fried potatoes and a local apple is brought out. When the mountains outside your window are suddenly revealed to be dusted with snow from …
My friend Dave and I arrived in Bhutan five days ago now. I had read up, I knew what to expect...Okay, not entirely. I did not expect the country to have such a thing for penises. Many house have ones painted on the outside, hairy or hairless, ejaculating or not.. I did not expect at …
