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Landing in Calais
Sometimes a memory surfaces of an experience I had while backpacking through Europe, at about age 19. I carried the same heavy Mountainsmith 65 liter backpack I’d used to climb Mt. Rainier and lead trips in the Colorado Rockies, and the same attitude of exploration and desire for new vistas, carrying all I needed in…
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Lifting the lid of the termite farm
I recently had a disappointing experience where I got some disturbing clarity about a number of things. It’s painful to realize that others have used you and your private expression over a number of years in order to support their own psychodrama, casting you, baselessly, as a perpetual villain while they get to take turns…
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the mess
The first time I had ankle surgery, it was on accident. I had had no choice but to trust the medical personnel taking care of me, at a point when my trust in institutions and helping people in general was pretty low. I was really lucky to land in excellent, compassionate hands with my surgeon.…
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Search for Clarity
Even now I still search for clarity. Where did I go so wrong? Where was the point at which I stepped from safety into all the danger. How might I have kept myself safe, how might I have survived all that. What didn’t I see, and still don’t see? What didn’t I understand then? Not…
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candy
In order to get my graduate degrees in the program I had been admitted to and chosen, I had to take classes in my department. I had no reason upon enrolling to believe that this would be a problem. But it was. It was the kind of abuse which is very difficult to describe and…
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streams
Why is and isn’t the right question to ask. Why there is abuse in the academy. The resources are few and competition is fierce. There is no incentive to collaborate. The path to recognition and reward is primarily independent research and production. The system is an indisputable hierarchy, built to support those at the top…