This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, death and the stars. — Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight” I’ve pulled…

I won’t be so salacious as to start this essay with clickbait like “I am a murderer.” But it’s true that I will be responsible in some way for the death of my own body. I’m not talking about suicide. But having two auto-immune disorders (Multiple Sclerosis, Juvenile Diabetes) means my own body attacks and fights itself, very likely to the debility, if not to the death. Of course, I’m not unique in this way; most of us in the first world will die because…

“…how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul…” This line from Virginia Woolf’s 1926 essay “On Being Ill” has stuck with me for…

Big Dipper’s music is queer. Not just queer. It’s also clever. And ironic, musically smart, and pretty liberating. But, still, it’s really queer. More specifically, it’s fun, smart pop-rap that sexualizes bearish men instead of naked girls. It’s subtly critical of masculinity and mainstream sexuality and not-so-subtly celebratory of gay…

I have something to admit. Sam Kalda, my interviewee today, is someone whose wedding I attended. But he’s also an artist and a writer whom I admire deeply; his first book, which he both wrote and illustrated, is called Of Cats and Men, and it’s a collection of quirky, brief…

“We can disagree and still like each other.” That is what Trump Supporter, a younger relative of mine, wrote to me after telling me that (1) NY had recently passed a law allowing women to abort fully-grown “children” and (2) CNN, the NY Times, the Washington Post and the AP…

Miguel Gutierrez is a verb. He dances and choreographs, he’s the lead singer and driving force of the band Sadonna, writes and publishes and performs poetry, makes performance art, practices Feldenkrais (look it up if you don’t know it, because it will change your life) and teaches both Feldenkrais and…