What kind of Despair? What kind of Hope? Let’s be ANTINA.

We need to be ANTINA: COVID ANTI-NATIONALISTS.

The Daily Path, by my friend Debjani Roysarkar-Gupta, a true hidden talent

These are the days of arid pauses and stricken silence. In these days, my talented girlhood friend Debjani — physician, painter, poet, mother, wife and voyager — has come forth with a truly meditative philosophical fable about where our place is, with or without CORONA. I wanted to share it with my readers and friends who are also, perhaps, struggling to find an aesthetic for mutation, muteness and mutability….without despair. THE DAILY PATH A ticket for a round trip please.Where to?To a gentler caring world, at least for today. The Conductor smiled at the naive request,A word of caution…Co passengers…

Sally Rooney’s Normal People

Brava, Sally Rooney! I’m taken by how actions are not acted out by the ends of sentences. And by how past and present co-exist easily within ten to fifteen words (though what does that mean for subjectivity anyway?). But there is also a quality of unabashed sentimentality, love-story-like elements. Probably to propel the plot forward? I’m expecting this wry, off-kilter statement about modern — or even ancient — love out of joint, and then the telling veers back into a “love story” timbre. At first the story oscillates between both lovers’ fears of unrequitedness, but later it crescendoes in a…