“Negative Energy”—Physics or Fantasy?
Negative energy is shorthand for a whole lot of variables we would rather not, often cannot, itemize.But as a summary of subtle perceptions, it is entirely valid.
By Jeannette Cooperman
Stoicism as the Art of Learning How to Feel Without Fear
Ignoring the blithe optimism practiced by motivational speakers even in his day, Seneca urges us toward a “steadiness of heart” that is purposeful and “cannot be dislodged from its position.” His advice sounds simplistic, the stuff of cliché and needlepoint pillows. But when have I ever pulled it off?
Better We Should Be at War
(Photo by Dick DeMarsico for the New York World-Telegram, now in the Library of Congress) “What would you rather go through, a war or a pandemic?” I asked a friend the other day. She thought a minute. “A pandemic. That way I’ve at least got a little control over my…
A Little Night Music
(Photo by Jörg Schreier via Flickr) The night was muggy, a storm grumbling as it approached, and I was rushing the dog through a boring walk around the block. Then I heard it. A warm strum of guitar chords, intricate and lilting. Not a recording. Live. Funny, how quickly you…
The End of Feminine Hygiene
Admit it. You read that headline and thought, “Eeeewwww.” Women have been told for millennia that our bodies are unclean, swampy, smelly, rank with ooze and blood. We have been sent to huts, barred from ritual baths and religious services, denied pleasure and confidence. Even in our enlightened “modern period”…
Name Your Place
I was born to live by the ocean and wake to thundering surf. Or in the valley of a craggy, majestic mountain, its top a misty purple. In the wooded cove of a northern lake. In the desert, even, with the solace of a fierce landscape.
How Fatalism Could Kill Us All
“You’ve gotta live,” people like to say, shrugging off some constraint or precaution. I was always the first to agree. Until COVID-19. “If it’s my time, that’s up to God,” a woman remarks to me late in lockdown, adding that she does not wear a mask. Pressing my lips…
Capitalizing “Black”
Back in the early ’90s, when we were living in sin, my future husband and I stayed at a bnb in Nauvoo, Illinois. We were there to learn the town’s Mormon history, and we were a little shy with the hospitable but devout Mormons who assumed we were legally wed.
What I Learned on My Summer Furlough
After three months on furlough, I was scared to gear up again. I had forgotten how to use a zipper; stopped even bothering with lip gloss for Zoom. I was not sure my adrenal glands still functioned. Taking permission from catastrophe, I ate, drank, and slept as I chose, cheesecake…
College, Interrupted
By their own admission, they are a little driven, used to studying among some of the brightest minds in the country, with goals held up that most folks never attain. Now all that has skidded to a partial halt, and they are sitting in their childhood bedroom fighting the temptations of a nap or a Netflix binge.
Notes on the Illusion of a Clockwork World
Time is an odd phenomenon, now that we have had the time to feel it passing. Novelists and filmmakers toy with it, imagining it running parallel to itself, moving backward, varying its speed, freezing altogether. But I am not sure anyone ever imagined exactly this.
Where Everybody Knows Your Business
(Image by Bryan Wilkins via Flickr) Oh, God, here we go. The headline on Nextdoor Waterloo reads “Rooster crows all day long!” All my urban hackles rise, bracing to read a list of nasty, unneighborly gripes from people stuck at home with plenty of energy for vitriol. It was so…