Realism and Sacredness

Tennessee Williams' shocking play Suddenly Last Summer  is one of his efforts to confront, with an overwhelming amount of courage and honesty, the horror of sexual dissociation. Young Catharine, suspected of mental illness and under threat of lobotomy, is injected with a truth serum, and under its influence tells a terrible story. Her cousin Sebastian, who traveled with her abroad, exploited her to lure young men he could have sex with (as he had exploited his mother before her.) Eventually, a heated, incited mob of hungry, abused children, chases Sebastian in the streets of Spain and exacts a terrible revenge: they mutilate and murder him and even feast on his flesh. The story is too much for Sebastian's relatives to handle. It horrifies us, as well, and at the same time captivates us, as horrible things often do. There's a reason why cultural heritage is universally infused with stories of mobs and sacrifice. The classic, of course, is the Greatest Story Ever Told. The lu...

Shortly before the election, David Brooks published a fascinating piece titled Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life . Among other things, he writes: Imagine you are Trump. You are trying to bluff your way through a debate. You’re running for an office you’re completely unqualified for. You are chasing some glimmer of validation that recedes ever further from view.  Your only rest comes when you are insulting somebody, when you are threatening to throw your opponent in jail, when you are looming over her menacingly like a mafioso thug on the precipice of a hit, when you are bellowing that she has “tremendous hate in her heart” when it is clear to everyone you are only projecting what is in your own.  Trump’s emotional makeup means he can hit only a few notes: fury and aggression. In some ways, his debate performances look like primate dominance displays — filled with chest beating and looming growls. But at least primates have bands to connect with, whereas Trump is so alone,...

A few weeks ago, a trusted friend forwarded me an email from the mother of one of the inmates at Corcoran. There was a heatwave, she explained; there were no fans in the rooms and, with no ventilation, life for the inmates (many of whom were segregated) became unbearable. Several people were hospitalized. She wanted us to write to the warden. I did. I was careful to denote that I had no personal knowledge of the conditions, but cautious not to mention the sender of the email, out of fear of retaliation. A couple of days later, my friend forwarded me another email from the original sender; apparently, her son received some relief and said, "I don't know what you did, mom, but they came to check the temperature." Several days after these events I received a detailed email from the Corcoran warden. He wrote that the information I had was false and that I was misleading people, and attached a detailed heat protocol for the prison. I had to sit back and breathe a bit. Pe...

Like pretty much every decent person I know, I was outraged to find out--via tweet, no less--that our president has decided to ban transgender people from military service. This is one more example of the casual afterthought with which this administration erases civil rights and is an absolute outrage. I also agree with those who commented this morning that simultaneous occurrence of bad things (efforts to deny healthcare to millions of Americans and efforts to marginalize trans people) does not imply that one is a "distraction" from the other. It is pouring bad news, and these are just two of those. And yet, I always find myself uneasy when our civil rights struggle revolves around military service. My discomfort stems, I imagine, from having grown up in an extremely militarized country, in which two massive fictions govern the idea of service: that everyone must serve (i.e., that the army is moral and ethical and is busy defending a small democracy in a sea of hostile c...

On election night I was at a party downtown, on the second floor of a new pub, with the architects of Prop. 62, may it rest in peace. A big TV screen showed the national election numbers, which grew more and more worrisome by the hour, and servers ascended the staircase with fried appetizers. I expressed concern to one of the guys who ran the campaign. Don't worry, he said, she's got it in the bag. But I kept looking at the screen with grave concern, and then the numbers on the local propositions started rolling in. That Prop. 64 passed was no big surprise, and that Prop. 62 did not look like it was going to pass was a disappointment. We didn't know yet that 66 was going to pass. But the national scene already looked pretty disturbing. Embarrassment and defeat stood in the room like stale air. I left the party and hopped on my scooter, riding to Hastings. The Democratic Club had invited me and Chad to see the election results with them on the 24th floor. The Sky Room of...

At the corner of Castro and Market, facing the grand Castro Theater, flies our flag, high and proud, featuring all colors of the rainbow, vibrant and alive against the blue skies. Just a month and a half ago we lost Gilbert Baker, the artist who created the Rainbow Flag. Baker’s original design was to have eight stripes: pink stood for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony and purple for spirit. The pressures and costs of mass production led Baker to drop two colors—pink and turquoise—and the resulting flag is now a recognizable symbol of our community. And when I look at your smiling faces today, even though you are all clad in blue and gold, I see all colors of the rainbow flag. I see an appetite and zest for life, which kept you going for three years in law school; I see a passion for healing through advocating for others; I see the desire to help everyone stand proudly under the sun; I see true commitment...

If you're anything like me, it has been difficult to get things done in the last few months, as the Russia probe slowly unraveled. Like roadside drivers slowing down because they can't take their eyes off a disastrous wreck, I have followed the newspapers, the posts, the tweets, and even been to the studio a couple of times to comment on key moments of the scandal (the Comey testimony had me holed up at KTVU for four hours.) Glee and furor about the discoveries turns into despair at the slim prospects that some of our Republican lawmakers will grow a backbone and strip the Emperor of Trumpistan of his new clothes. A couple of months ago I had some friends over for lunch and a viewing of Coppola's terrific All the President's Men with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The intrigues on screen are absorbing and evoke a feeling of paranoia and a chase. But the movie also left me dismayed at how our naiveté has evaporated. In the seventies, a president who spies on his op...

My visit to Israel went well. I got to see my cousin Shahaf as one of the witches in the Scottish play and enjoyed spending time with my parents. I had never appreciated their beautiful garden when I lived at home with them. But now, when I sat in it, its rich lushness, and the gentle symphony of noises and voices whistling through its ground and trees cheered my soul to no end. We have become softer and more sentimental, more outwardly loving, then we were in my youth. We parted in tears and hugs at the airport. I boarded the flight at midnight, took a small square of CBD chocolate, and fell asleep immediately. "They're deplaning us!" a call rang near my ear. I sprang upright in my seat and looked on the airplane screen. The time was 2am. The flight attendants announced a problem with the PA system. The plane could not take off. We were all to deplane and retrieve our luggage. It took people a few moments to adjust to the new reality--especially the many of them wi...

January 12, 1900. A 19-year-old Yosef Haim Brenner, freshly disillusioned with religion and with a Yeshiva boy career--and two years before his first novel, In Winter , will launch his meteoric literary career, writes to his soulmate and friend, Uri Nissan Gnessin: We must sacrifice our soul and decrease the evil in the world, evil of hunger, slavery, dismissal, hypocrisy, and the like. It is essential to understand everything, understand and distance ourselves from mysticism and mirages. It is essential to increase the realism and sacredness in the world. It is essential to mend the Israeli People's life to make it normal. And the terrible agony of my soul is the outcome of my doubts in general: Is there a remedy? Are we going forward? ... A few days ago I became a plant eater (vegetarian.) You are writing a historical poem - and that I do not understand. Can we afford to distract ourselves, even for a moment, from the present? Do you know the situation of our youth? Do you rea...