Mindfulness

By B.J. Miller

We all need a reason to wake up. For me, it was 11,000 volts of electricity. One night, sophomore year of college, a few friends and I were out on the town; one thing led to another, and we decided to climb a parked commuter train. Fun, no? I scurried up the ladder on the back, and when I stood up, whammo!  The current arced to my metal wristwatch, entered my arm, and blew down and out my feet. I lost half of an arm and both legs below the knee. I spent a few months recovering in the St Barnabas burn unit in Livingston, NJ. One day, several weeks in to the affair, it began to snow outside. I was told it was coming down hard and pretty. Around that time, a friend of mine smuggled a snowball into the burn unit for me. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt. The sensation of coldness on my skin, the miracle of it as I watched it melt to water. In that moment, I was amazed enough to be any part of this planet in this universe that whether I lived or died became irrelevant.

How important are human lives in the larger scope of things?

When are we sheltered, and when are we exposed?

BJ Miller, M.D., is a palliative care specialist and educator at UCSF, and executive director of San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project.

Childhood

By Mickey Rapkin

It was 1990 and like most kids in their Bar Mitzvah year, I was more interested in planning My Super Sweet 13 than practicing my Haftorah. I imagined sequined dancers and a ten-piece band. I obsessed over the mix of food stations. My parents supplied giant foam fingers like you’d get at a Knicks game. When I look back at the photos I wonder: Why did I ever want such an elaborate celebration of puberty? I guess because I was 13 and overweight and imperfect and I wanted to feel the love. If I could do it all over again, I can’t say I’d skip the party. But I wish I’d have joined my dad during the hora, as he raised one hand in the air and did Arsenio Hall’s signature whoop whoop whoop. I wish I’d have practiced the silly poems he wrote for the candle lighting ceremony instead of reading them cold, wondering what the word mishpucha meant. I would have talked to my mishpucha (it means family!) instead of hanging out in the bathroom. Years later I learned what all real men know: That this pain? This too shall pass. I would have told myself, “You won’t always feel so small.”

What advice would you give your younger self?

Would your younger self listen?

Mickey Rapkin is a journalist and author whose books include “Pitch Perfect” and “Theatre Geek.”

Childhood

By Josh Kun

I have never been one to stand up straight, even before I was tall. As a kid, I was always criticized for my posture. My mother would pull on a hair from the top of my head, as if it were a string directly connected to my spine. In home movies of birthday parties and holidays, the camera always catches me slightly hunched (usually in corduroy Ocean Pacific shorts and white Big 5 tube socks pulled up to the knee), indulging in one of my two favorite bad habits: biting my nails and twirling my bowl-cut dirty-blond hair into tangled, often painful knots. Both habits are made easier by slouching; both encourage the body to fold into itself, to bring the head down from its heights and bury itself into the chest and shoulders, to erase the body, to reject it. I’ve always comforted myself by believing that both habits are signs of extreme interior mental activity, habits of nervousness and anxiety and worry (all codes for intelligence, right?), habits that, like my constantly shaking right leg, are proof that I’m always thinking about things. Who needs this body when the mind is where the action is? Mutilate the shell to nourish the soul. Kill the body to feed the mind. Something like that.  [From “Slouch,” Guilt and Pleasure, Issue 5, Summer 2007]

In what ways are you the same or different from your younger self?

How often do you still take cues on how to behave from your parents?

Josh Kun is an author, academic and music critic who is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.

Scholarship

By Nicole Spector

Every week it’s the same dream: I’m a sophomore in high school and I’ve missed nearly an entire semester of Miss MacDonald’s AP literature class. Now it’s finals time. My alarm clock is shrieking. I’ve got twenty minutes to get to school and also, to read with great scrutiny, several books. The list includes obvious classics like Crime & Punishment and Madam Bovary. I haven’t so much as cracked the cover of any of them. I’m devastated. How could I have been so irresponsible?

Inside the dream, I panic. Knowing Miss MacDonald, one of the school’s oldest teachers (she's been there at least four decades), she won't go easy on us. She'll test our familiarity with the works down to utter minutiae. She’ll want to know what Raskolnikov’s room is like — how many feet long? What novel helped shape Emma’s romantic ideals? There will be long essays to write on the spot and no multiple-choice questions.

I must find a way to postpone taking this exam.

But it's not just Miss MacDonald’s disappointment that gets me. It's a deeper sense of failure. I remember something that happened when I first met her. This happened in real life, in the life outside the dream, but I remember it within the dream. I remember arriving early to her first period class despite my aversion to the morning. I remember dropping in after school to ask questions to which I knew the answers. It wasn’t because I enjoyed the class, really. It was because it felt good to watch her pale gray eyes light up with my phony enthusiasm. I guess I thought I was doing some kind of good deed. I perceived her as a lonely person. What I was learning wasn't about Raskolnikov's room. It was about varying kinds of generosity and sacrifice. Is that a better lesson?

Today I looked her up. She died a few years ago. I also found an old report card. She’d given me an A-.    

What have you learned from books?

What have you learned from other people?

Nicole Spector is a writer and editor in New York. She is the author of Fifty Shades of Dorian Grey.

Scholarship

By Ben Greenman

Kids study history. They go to school and learn about numbers for math and words for literature, but then those two roads converge in history. The Battle of Hastings was 1066. The Civil War ran from 1861 to 1865. Man went to the moon in 1969. Those numbers yoked to words seem like layered facts. In fact they are the opposite.

I have a kid. That kid studied history. He took exams where he was required to recall dates and places, dates and names, dates and events. No matter whether he conquered them or they conquered him, those exams left him cold. “I did well, Dad,” he said, depositing the paper on the table for me to sign. “I didn’t do so well, Dad,” he said, depositing the paper on the table for me to sign.

I have another kid. That kid studied history. He did not take exams where he was required to recall dates and places, dates and names, dates and events. His teacher refashioned history as a glowing line that wound through different places, names, and events like a live wire. The date sat atop the line like a suggestion. That kid did not take many exams at all. He wrote papers where he was required to trace that glowing line. It made him glow as well, no matter whether he mastered them or they mastered him. “I wrote about Ivan Krasnov,” he said. “He was a general for the Cossacks who defended Tagnarog but he also wrote articles. I wrote like I was him for this paper.”

The two kids are the same kid. The first transformed beautifully into the second. The first is now history.

What is the best way to teach?

Is every student different?

Ben Greenman is a NYT-bestselling writer and a contributing writer to the New Yorker. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Bergen County.

Values

By Leah Umansky

As a child, my dad used to joke that the way to my heart was through my stomach. I’m in my mid-thirties and he still makes that joke.

I blame it on being two months premature, and being born at 2lbs 6oz, but nothing makes me happier than a cheeseburger or a steak.

As a single woman in her thirties, I’m on a few dating sites. There have been times I’ve been at a loss for what to write in my profile. “Teacher, poet, book lover”? “Teacher, poet, romantic, anglophile”? “Teacher, poet, romantic, anglophile, book snob carnivore”?

Finally, I settled on “I’m a teacher, and a poet. The way to my heart is steak and books.”

What I want people to know is that I’m not going to be a bird on our date and eat a goddamn salad.  How many men do you see who order salad at a bar on a date? Very few.

I remember back in college, a professor took me out for lunch to Applebee’s. I ordered the riblets, because they’re delicious. She ordered a salad.  

“Okay,” the server said. “One order of riblets and one small salad.”

I watched my professor shake her head, sigh, and toss back her long blonde hair.

“No,” she said. “I want the large salad. Don’t assume all women want the side salad.” 

A few years ago, my father stopped eating meat. I panicked. Who would take me out for steak on my birthday? 

A friend recently joked around with me, and said, “You’re a fancy poet who runs around Manhattan waiting for people to cook her meat.”

You know what, she’s sort of right.  

What is a societal value you have seen change during your lifetime?

What is a societal value you hope to see change?

Leah Umansky is a poet and teacher whose most recent collection is the Mad Men-themed chapbook Don Dreams and I Dream.

Values

By John Donohue

I recently saw a sticker on the frame of a subway exit gate. It was in big black letters against a white background: “Amplify Love/ Dissipate Hate,” it said.

Someone had stuck it at eye level. I figured it might have been better placed on an entry turnstile, to prepare commuters for the shoving, hustling, and petty inconveniences of a ride below ground. 

What I liked best about the sticker wasn’t stated explicitly—that we have a choice in how we act towards people. That may seem obvious, but it's anything but. Those choices are at the heart of what we think of as our values.

A friend’s aged and well-off mother-in-law still hates the man who lost $50,000 dollars of her husband’s investment forty years ago. She’s a devout Christian, and though a minister told her that forgiving the man would free her, she holds onto her bitterness and bile. I say that’s fine for her, because she clearly enjoys it. I choose to allow her that imperfection. 

As for me, I’m going to make a different choice about those who have wronged me. I'm not going to push back at them. I'm not going to judge them. I'm just going to leave them hanging in full view, like a sticker on a wall. Sometimes being seen for what you are is enough.

Where did you get your core values?

Do you think others should share your values?

John Donohue is a writer and editor in New York. He created the bestselling anthology Man With a Pan.

Balance

By Dan Crane

A few years ago, I had lunch with the guy who created MacGyver. No, he didn’t teach me how to defuse a bomb with a stick of bubblegum and a paperclip. He did, however, teach me something interesting about creativity and energy.

“Whenever I have a script to write,” he told me, “I’ll write a question on my whiteboard. For example: 'What happens in Act Three?' Or, 'How would MacGyver escape having to have lunch with this young man?'” 

I didn't know what to say to that. I said nothing.

“After that,” he said, “I’ll go build a model airplane.”

It might not surprise you to learn that the guy who created MacGyver builds fleets of model airplanes; but it might surprise you that he does it instead of writing scripts. Let me repeat: INSTEAD OF WRITING SCRIPTS.

He explained: The mind, he proclaimed, does its best creative work while at rest. Posing a question, then going away to do something else, was a way to level off, rest the mind, and let the subconscious take over. Basically, it’s like meditation—with the help of model airplane glue.

“It’s why people say they do their best thinking in the shower,” he said.

After our lunch, I went out and bought a model airplane. One day, I swear I’ll get around to building it.

Is there enough play in your work?

Is balance always about a thing and its opposite, or do side steps count?

Dan Crane is a journalist, author, comedian, host, musician, and retired competitive air-guitarist. He is the author of “To Air is Human: One Man’s Quest to Become the World’s Greatest Air Guitarist.”

Balance

By Alicia Van Couvering

I used to believe that honesty was all that mattered. Deep, raw, uncut vulnerability was the key to a fearless life, and should be encouraged in every interaction. So I let my tendency to overshare run wild. I never tried to impress anyone by buttoning up and staying composed; I only wanted to know them, and to make sure they knew me. I admitted my worst mistakes; I had no secrets; I had no strategy. It allowed me to skip the line of polite conversation and get right to the intimacy I craved. Executives would cry about their divorces at lunch; new friends would reveal it all. It was scary sometimes—I would leave a meeting shaken, unable to remember what I’d even said. What had possessed me to give it all away, as if the moment was holding me up at knife point, demanding that I lay everything on the table? Mostly I patted myself on the back: I was so vulnerable.

Here is what I’ve learned: Oversharing is not vulnerability. It breaks the ice violently. Real vulnerability, done right, is a gift to someone else: here, I gave you this, now you can give me something back, if you want to. Sharing yourself is only the first part of true vulnerability; standing back is the rest of it.

Is a life of balance an attainable goal?

How would I even know I led a balanced life last week?

Alicia Van Couvering is a movie producer whose films include Tiny Furniture, Drinking Buddies, and Junebug.

War

By Dan Fost

I’m wearing my orange jersey, and the cap with the orange bill. My son has the same jersey and the same cap, along with his glove, scorebook, pencil, and sports section. A throng of similarly dressed people surrounds us in the stadium. We are among our tribe.

Our tribe is the San Francisco Giants. When you’re a sports fan, you are absolutely part of a tribe. Whether you identify as a Giant, a Warrior, a Lion or a Brave, whether you wear orange, blue, or black, you are among your kind. You high-five strangers. You bask in the glory of your team after victories. You suffer when they lose. You have slogans that carry you further into your sense of togetherness: “We are Giants.” “This is Our Time.” “Better Together.”

Primitive humans relied on their tribe for food, shelter, and protection from danger. In more recent centuries, tribes cut across racial, ethnic or religious lines. That’s still out there, even at the ballgame, when we sing the national anthem.

But mostly, we’re lucky to live in this time and place. We’re not fighting other tribes for our lives, but merely for our entertainment. We’re satisfying a primal need, and no one gets hurt. 

Except the guys in Dodger blue.

What tribes do you belong to and what, if anything, do they bring to your life?

Do you change uniforms often?

Dan Fost is a veteran journalist who has written about everything from technology to politics. He is the author of two books about the San Francisco Giants, Giants Baseball Experience and Giants, Past and Present.

War

By David Bezmozgis

It is impossible for me to separate my grandfather’s death from the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006. In my mind, the two tragedies are wedded together, or at least proceed in parallel. My grandfather seemed to relinquish his last hold on life when the rockets started falling on Kiryat Shmona and Haifa. It was around this time that he started to slip in and out of lucidity. What had before been a resigned or willful silence became something remote and otherworldly. Three times a day, either Nadja or a nurse would succeed in penetrating his stupor to give him food, which he accepted obediently or instinctively, like a baby bird. Otherwise, he drifted. We would stand at his bedside and watch his chest rise and fall with surprising regularity. Occasionally, and totally unpredictably, he would emerge from his stupor for a morning or an afternoon and regard us with comprehension and clarity. In these rare moments, we peppered him with dull questions but said not a word about Israel, the war, the catastrophe that flickered nonstop on television in the other room. We didn’t want to upset him, but by keeping the war from him I felt that we were severing his last meaningful connection to the world. Now that we could no longer talk to him about Israel, we could no longer talk to him at all.

Is there anything you would go to war for?

What are you not telling someone for fear of upsetting them?

David Bezmozgis is an award-winning author and filmmaker whose books include Natasha And Other Stories and The Betrayers. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, and elsewhere.

Power

By Janine Avril

People say that knowledge is power, but it’s more complicated than that. In the not so distant future, my future mother-in-law, Ellen, will learn whether she has the BRCA mutation—the BRCA is a tumor-suppression gene, and a mutation greatly increases the chance of breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Ellen, who suffered a bout of breast cancer last year and lost her own mother—a Holocaust survivor—to breast cancer, is boundlessly nervous about this information. In truth, if she had it her way, she would not have been tested for the gene at all. She is the type of person who would prefer the bliss of not-knowing. Yet, she chose to do the testing last week.

Ellen has two daughters, my future sister-in-law Amy and my partner Heidi. The possibility of BRCA has power over them in different ways. If Amy, a mother of three young children, learns she has BRCA, she would go to the extreme. She has already said so. She would preserve herself by removing any potentially affected body parts. Heidi, several years younger, has a different philosophy. She wants to have children eventually and holds out hope of breastfeeding them. She would rather wait to test for the gene until after she has children. Modern medicine can tell us what might be in our cards, but it cannot tell us how to play our hand.

I am just a bystander at the moment. I am not officially in this family yet. I have my own theories about what people should do, but they are just theories. Is knowledge power, or is it powerlessness?

How often do you feel powerless? 

What's the relationship between power and control in your life?

Janine Avril is the author of the memoir Nightlight.

Power

By Steve Goldbloom

Like most people, I seem more fun on the Internet.

Have you ever considered how many hours we devote to filters, tags, likes, shares and other virtual currencies of validation?

I barely remember who I was before mobile technology—how I killed time between moments. I miss the spark of imagination that comes from being bored.

Being bored is a lost art now. Same goes for observing and listening. I mean really listening to people, especially strangers.

I miss being scared at parties, without the aid of a gadget to look busy.

My parents forbade me from going to a friend’s house to play video games. Now kids stay in and watch people they’ve never met play video games.

When did sharing an experience become more valuable than experiencing it?

You could say technology has created a culture of convenience. But you have to admit, it has turned us into an odd bunch.

The other day I had to double park my Prius for a minute so I flicked on the flashers and pulled over. In seconds, a strange woman opened the door and piled into the back seat.

She looked up from her phone and said “Oh, you’re not the Uber.” “No,” I said. “I am not Uber.”

Next time, I think I’ll keep going, if only to see who breaks first.

In your own struggle with technology, who or what is winning? 

Does technology increase or decrease your personal power?

Steve Goldbloom is a writer, producer, and performer best known for creating and starring in the PBS comedy series Everything But the News (2014).

Food

By Pauls Toutonghi

I’ve been staring at babies a lot, lately.  

My wife gave birth to twins. The house is full of howling and giggling at all hours of the day and night.  

The babies make noise, too.  

But since the noise they make is not English noise, I have to admit that I’ve started to wonder what they’re thinking. And they clearly are thinking. Here’s a list of what I’ve noticed that they perceive: Hunger, joy, panic, satisfaction, pain, excitement, sleepiness, wonder.  

These emotions are clear; there’s no doubt when they’re hungry, happy, or sleepy. They are not shy. As Woody Guthrie sang to little Arlo Guthrie so many years ago: “I want my milk and I want it now.”  

But there’s one thing that my children don’t yet seem to do. They don’t remember. 

I have no memories from when I was an infant. And I’m always suspicious of people who have them—no matter how stridently they insist that they can close their eyes and see, vividly see, the color of their nursery walls. I just don’t buy it. I think they’ve built that memory as adults. They’ve sneaked into the citadel and planted the seed of the memory, themselves. We learn to remember at about the same time we learn to speak, I think.

What’s something that happened this week you’d like to keep as a memory?

Pauls Toutonghi's next book is True North, the true story of a family's search for its lost dog. It will be published by Knopf in 2016.

Food

By Ben Greenman

Eating Jewish wasn’t a religious issue. It was a cultural issue. That’s what my parents always told me, partly to explain my grandmother. We’d go over there, my two brothers and I, and within twenty minutes we’d vanish inside a welter of bread, butter, brisket, potatoes, soup, sugar soda (not allowed at home), cookies (allowed, but not at those levels), and ice cream. Who needs two desserts? We did.

Eating Jewish wasn’t a cultural issue. It was a historical one. That’s what my grandparents told me, partly to counter my parents. Here in America, not two decades after the family had arrived, stuffed full of hope, the Great Depression had descended, a period of severe privation that rivaled the problems my great-grandfather had faced in Russia, minus the Cossacks shooting at him in the apple orchard.

Eating Jewish wasn’t a historical issue. It was an ethical one. That’s what my great-grandfather told me, partly to amplify my grandparents. No one in the trunk of my family tree was in the Holocaust, but my grandfather had cousins. His father’s brothers had left Russia for France, certain they would have a better life. But they were heading into the teeth of time. Eating, and eating well, was proof that no one could keep us from life.

Eating Jewish was none of those things. It was a tactic. That’s what my brothers and I told each other. Eating with the family was a way of keeping you at the table, eating Jewish, talking about what it wasn’t, demonstrating what it was.

What’s a strong memory you have of eating with your family around a table?

Ben Greenman is a bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Brooklyn.

Stories

By B.J. Miller

We all need a reason to wake up. For me, it was 11,000 volts of electricity. One night, sophomore year of college, a few friends and I were out on the town; one thing led to another, and we decided to climb a parked commuter train. Fun, no? I scurried up the ladder on the back, and when I stood up, whamo!  The current arced to my metal wristwatch, entered my arm, and blew down and out my feet. I lost half of an arm and both legs below the knee. I spent a few months recovering in the St Barnabas burn unit in Livingston, NJ. One day, several weeks in to the affair, it began to snow outside. I was told it was coming down hard and pretty. Around that time, a friend of mine smuggled a snowball into the burn unit for me. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt. The sensation of coldness on my skin, the miracle of it as I watched it melt to water. In that moment, I was amazed enough to be any part of this planet in this universe that whether I lived or died became irrelevant.

Are you awake right now?

BJ Miller, M.D., is a palliative care specialist and educator at UCSF, and executive director of San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project.

STORIES #2

By Julie Hermelin

“You know that feeling, the one when the voice in your head tells you someone loves you from afar? I had that today,” said Joy, taking another sip of her Jack and Coke. It was another humid New York night and we’d been planted on the sticky bar stools at King Tut’s Wah Wah House, enjoying their industrial reticulating fan.

I had no idea what she was talking about.  It was 1988, and in the waning days of my teenage years, that was nowhere near the voice in my head. My voice was a constant, Howard Stern-esque, stream of criticism and ridicule that sounded unmistakably like my older brother.

Joy heard a different voice, an astoundingly different voice. What would it be like to try on that voice? To look out at the world thinking you are loved and seeing love that’s there? Howard laughed at the idiocy.

I picked at the bandage of my new tattoo. When we decided to get the tattoos that morning, I sketched something quickly on a napkin while we ate our eggs. “What’s that?” Joy asked. “Just something I’ve been doodling.” I didn’t mention that to my eyes the six points made up an abstract Jewish star bursting open. When the tattoo artist offered to put special “glow in the dark” ink in the center, I smiled.

What would it be like to change your story?

Julie Hermelin is a storyteller, idea generator, filmmaker, and co-founder of Momstamp. She lives in LA with her three monkey children.

Rebellion

By Jenn Maer

When I was a little kid, I was obsessively well-behaved. I ate my vegetables. Got straight As. Wrote thank you notes for every single gift I received. 

Then one day, I snapped.

It happened during recess in fifth grade. It was my turn to take the red rubber ball to the playground, which meant I was in charge of keeping it safe and choosing the game we’d play. I took this responsibility seriously—like I did everything back then—and silently vowed to be a just and fair keeper of the ball. We would play Four Square, I decreed: No backstops, no spinsies. 

Then out of nowhere, Adrian B, a sixth grade bully with the hard, mean eyes of a career criminal, stole my red rubber ball. The ball I’d earned with good behavior. The ball I’d sworn to protect.

This would not stand.

A white-hot rage bloomed inside me like a tiny, pony-tailed Hulk. I raised my fist and threw the first (and only) punch of my life. Adrian turned his back to me in reflex and the blow hit his spine with a sickening crack. I broke my wrist with that single punch. 

Adrian cried. 

I did not.

And every damn kid in the school signed my cast.

Ask yourself or your table this: Have you ever rebelled against your nature to achieve a greater good?

Jenn Maer’s career as a storyteller began at age seven when she penned (well, actually, penciled) her first novel—a 75-page, double-spaced, spiral notebook tour de force entitled “Shark!” She is a design director at IDEO.

Rebellion

By Shoshana Berger

I’d just completed my first semester of theater school at Carnegie Mellon when I got The Fat Letter. It hung amongst four others, nearly identical, pinned to the department bulletin board in crisp white envelopes. By fat, I don’t mean that it was stuffed with paperwork. I mean it was a letter whose sole purpose was to inform me that I was too fat. Carnegie Mellon is where Ted Danson and Holly Hunter and Ethan Hawke learned how to act. I doubt Ted Danson ever got a fat note. I looked around to see who was in the hall, then yanked it down and scurried away.

In neat courier type, it recommended I go see the school nutritionist and work on an exercise regimen. I grew up in Berkeley in the 70s. My mother wore flowing peasant Marimekko dresses and ate KFC out of the bucket. Hollywood bulimic chic was as appealing to me as any 18-year-old, but also a staggering rebuke to my free-to-be-you-and-me budding feminism. Fat notes weren’t a part of my worldview. So, I ate the fried zucchini sticks, drank the beer, and was kicked out of school at the end of freshman year. I transferred to NYU and joined a pot-bellied experimental theater troupe.

What small acts of rebellion have determined the course of your life? 

Shoshana Berger has written for the New York Times, SPIN, WIRED, and a stint as the editorial director (more like “cool-hunter”) for Young & Rubicam. She is an editorial director at IDEO.