Category Archives: Meditations

At Finisterre’s edge of the world…

From time to time, and usually in the summer, I post photographs that friends send back from their travels–South America, the Balkan countries, the Middle East, anywhere and everywhere a traveler’s fancy has taken them for pleasure or pilgrimage, fun … Continue reading

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From Feuntes’ “Myself with Others”

I went back to my notes from Feuntes’ Myself with Others, after I heard the news of his death.  They are as alive as they were some twenty-five years ago, when I wrote them down in a notebook whose pages … Continue reading

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On Michael Haneke’s “Amour”

  ~~ My essay, “Reading the Book of Living with Michael Haneke’s Amour,”  is now posted on the on-line literary/cultural magazine, The Bangalore Review. Check it out here.   http://www.bangalorereview.com/2014/06/reading-the-book-of-living-with-michael-hanekes-amour/ ~~

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Do you know the way to Sacromonte?

~~This post originally appeared on this blog; then it migrated to the blog of the radio program “On Being;” and now it is back in its home.  This homecoming today is an occasion for celebration in an otherwise mostly dreary … Continue reading

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Ara Oshagan’s work on Social Documentary website

~~Ara Oshagan, my cousin, good friend and partner in profound silliness, is the featured photographer on the Social Documentary website for his work on juvenile prisons in California. I have featured Ara’s work on this blog before, twice. ~~ Here … Continue reading

Posted in Armenians, Cities and towns, From My Files, Languages and readings, Meditations, Ordinary places, Rx for Maladies, Those we Love | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

First Loves: An Iliad at the Paramount, Boston

After the howls, the reverberating screams, the chants, the recitations, the physical re-enactment of war; after the fleeting tender moments amidst the horrors of war; after the narrator’s teases and asides Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson’s An Iliad ends in … Continue reading

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After Sandy Hook:II

From Sandy Hook to Taft Union,teachers–those ant-like creatures who choose unimaginably low pay over fat checks and big bonuses, who work in wretched classrooms rather than spacious corporate offices, who spend many nights correcting papers rather than dining at swanky … Continue reading

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Tips on Happiness 3: Uncharted seas*

~~On a wet, raw evening, the mind and heart can become pensive, wander off course.  It is such an evening in Boston–the summer surely in retreat, the winter not quite here yet. In-between, indeterminate, and exciting. Well-meaning writing teachers will … Continue reading

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Tips on Happiness 2: Between Dover Beach and Swampscott,MA

[We’ll stick with the word happiness but I don’t like it, as I made clear in Tip 1.  It’s not happiness, as Dr. Weil correctly points out. He likes contentment; I don’t like that either. It smells of zen serenity, … Continue reading

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Tips on Happiness I: what to throw out, what to keep

Tips on Happiness: A Rant and a Celebration in Several Parts I was waiting for the journal prescription–keep a journal, they all say it–and it came in Dr. Andrew Weil’s third tip for achieving happiness.  (It’s on MSNBC, under “Happiness … Continue reading

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