Technology of the self, No. 9

You’re lying in bed thinking about getting up and thinking some more. Suddenly, you’re up and on your feet, quickly and without effort. How does that happen? Your thinking tuned and toned your muscles for action. It was as much mental as physical, and more...

Technologies of the self, No. 7

If your goal is to open, to live centrifugally rather than centripetally, you can do that only insomuch as you welcome all the data of your environment in, your desk, your instrument, the room, the individuals in it, the yards, the mountains and seas beyond. Breathe...

Technologies of the self, No. 6

“Over there, limmed Tomas Tranströmer, the sky is leaning against a wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty.” The air, the sky, if you will, is leaning on us all around, buoying us up. If we were as sensitive as some practitioners of yoga, we could feel...