Knowing ourselves must surely include knowing not only that but how much our very sense of ourselves is a “mythic reality” by which we convince others of things about ourselves by first convincing ourselves. In the dance of deception, the evolutionary arms race means t...

We know our bodies intimately. It is through our bodies and our nervous systems that we are aware of and come to know anything at all. But in a sense our bodies are a zero-point, and even how we feel about our bodies and our place in the world may depend heavily upon w...

When he was born, his mama said,

“The moon turned black, and the clock stopped dead.

Lord, have mercy,” she said, “what have I done?

Is my flesh and blood the Devil’s son?”

The Stone Coyotes: “Powder Keg,” by Barbara Keith

In director Lynne Ramsay’s (2011) We Need to Talk A...

The tender pragmatisms of flesh have poetries no enigma--human or divine--can diminish or demean. Indeed, it can only cause them, and then walk out. John Fowles

There is much that we know with and through our bodies that we do not know that we know, or desperately try t...

The Socratic maxim, gnothi seauton, “know thyself,” was originally intended to emphasize its importance, over time wasted on things like mythology. Understanding ourselves, knowing who we are, including acknowledging our limitations, is also likely to help us evaluate...

An occasionally wise erstwhile friend once told me he thought there were three important things in life to think about. While his expression was somewhat more profane, I took him to mean scientific discovery, creative expression, and one’s intimate relationships. “Anyt...

This is a "guest blog" from my old friend Martha, my one-time Dean of Faculty who got me involved in a writing group, part of the inspiration for my current life. We also once went on a pilgrimage from Statesboro, Georgia, where she was then chairing the department of...

Strange beginnings to some thoughts about epigenesis. For those of you who aren’t sure what that means, it’s the part of biological development involving gradual differentiation of an unstructured embryo from genotype into phenotype (that is, from what is encoded in th...

One of the most iconic images of the Vietnam war era was of the “Napalm Girl,” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, her clothes burned away by American napalm, running toward the camera of AP photographer Nick Ut, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 photograph. Mr. Ut played a role in...

“This Be the Verse,”

by Philip Larkin, 1971

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

I remember the day my first-born son gave his older sister a severe tongue-lashing, his...