The 54-year-old woman presented as burrowed into some unhappiness while having achieved a good deal of professional success. The mother of two and the husband of one, she was the main source of financial support. They lived in a slightly decrepit midcentury modern house near the university where she worked. Years into her analysis she would say, repeatedly, that she loved her backyard more than she hated her husband. So, ergo, she could tolerate an unhappy marriage. This was a marriage where she continuously subordinated her own desires and instincts to those of her husband’s, who didn’t seem ..read more

There’s an old civil rights slogan: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The slogan of the Trump base might be: He is the one we were waiting for. And they will continue to wait, now even after he has left office, even after a second impeachment, and even if the Senate votes to convict and prevent him from office again. They will continue to wait and clamor for someone who will restore what was supposed to be theirs: the American dream promised to descendants of the Europeans who came to America, white America. The Trump base is not going away. In psychoanalytic terms, it remains gripped by ..read more

Governments and their institutions can do a lot of things. But one thing they cannot do is create their own legitimacy. That’s the brilliant thing about politics, no matter how fascistic it might be: institutions want to be seen as legitimate. But only the people themselves can bequeath legitimacy on their institutions. What we are witnessing across the world in the #blacklivesmatter protests following the murder of George Floyd is a massive withdrawal of legitimacy from the police. An op-ed in today’s New York Times makes this point perfectly. Hahrie Han writes, “Something unthinkable happen ..read more

Sitting in front of a fire, wearing a cardigan sweater, in February 1977 President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation about the energy crisis that had punched the country in the gut. Clearly the White House’s thermostat must have been turned down. The fire crackled, making the living room warm and toasty. Carter spoke of national policies but also what citizens could do, uttering the words “conservation” and “sacrifice.” The message was clear: turn off unnecessary lights, turn down the thermostat, put on a goddamned sweater. I remember clearly the contrast from the December before, when every ..read more

I am uninspired, a little broken, a little sad, and trepidatious, undone by my mother wondering if I can write poetry, but I suppose I already am. This is a long poem, interrupted by news flashes and news holes. Barrenness. Grape purpleness, a virus ravaging people all over the Earth, and there’s not much I can do. The best I can do is nothing. Don’t leave the house. Maybe stay in this little nook of the house, with my microwave and big white fridge, with my French press and small jar of sweetener. Maybe doing nothing is the best revenge against a microbial virus with the fucking ..read more

Not so long ago, epidemiologists said of a new deadly virus, “not if, but when.” Now the answer is “now.” I read all the news all day long, and it seems there is nothing left to say. Then today a friend wrote me with a “chain mail” poetry letter. So I sent a poem to a stranger, one of my favorite Robert Creeley poems, I Know a Man. So there are words after all. I will start by digging up some poems I wrote half a lifetime ago. And maybe I will start writing some new ones. Cactus Leaves I’m getting used to the idea of death he said to her while she lay sucking cactus leaves, occasionally ..read more

How could it get worse. A president found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors by the US House of Representatives let off the hook by a Senate more willing to look after their own future than the present and future of the country they are supposed to serve. In my piece last summer for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Public Sphere in Dark Times,” I argued that thanks to the robust role of the informal public sphere even Trump could not turn this country into a dictatorship. The events of this past week are put these ideas to the test. In that piece I distinguish three realms of the pub ..read more

I just quit Facebook today. It wasn’t that big a part of my life but now that I’ve quit it I realize how much of my cyborg life it was. Just like my phone. I might not use it that much but it is always there. And now FB no longer is, not the scores of people from my adolescent years, not the students and colleagues from my 30s, not my more recent friends from greater DC and Boston, not my current philosophy colleagues from all over the world. Facebook made it possible for me to have all these great connections, just as it made it possible for it to scoop up private data from 31 percent of the ..read more

I just finished watching Ken Burns’ two episodes on Frank Lloyd Wright. I’m left with where I was at the start, with mixed feelings. Yes, Falling Water is one of the most stunning architectural masterpieces of the past century, but for the most part Wright’s architecture focused on creating inner sanctums, not windows to the world. And most of it leaves me cold. He was a philanderer and a charlatan and a narcissist and an egoist. And there is no “however” to follow to make up for his personality flaws. The man seems to have been totally unbearable. But there was genius. He knew how architectur ..read more

I’m planning to run a workshop for graduate students on how to manage time, both the time when there’s never enough time and the stretches of time when there is all the time in the world (like a sabbatical). I’m still working on this, so let me run it by you all. Maybe you have some ideas? Please post them in the comments. Time Management Workshop Introduction Zen things. Do one thing at a time. Do it slowly and completely. Do less. Put space between things. Develop rituals. Think about what is necessary. Live simply. Find your style, whatever is ego-syntonic. Don’t use this as an exercise in ..read more