Compassion and empathy do not mean feeling for somebody, it means feeling with them-“Compassion begins ‘in the moment,’ . . . compassion is never pity, never feeling better than or condescending about someone’s suffering. Compassion is not about feeling sorrow for someone from a detached, righteous place; it is about…

Solea means loneliness. Not the desolation of the siguiriya, but the many sided agonies of love pregnant with possibilities against the seriousness of solitude. It was February and the orange trees were in bloom. The air in Seville hung with scent, inspiring los sevillanos to leave winter and its decay…

Grumpy is my cousin and she is a spaz. She has just little too much junk in her trunk and wears her jeans so tight you know she has to lie down to zip. She is a tragedy waiting to happen. She has been skating since she was a kid…

What do we truly know about a writer’s intentions? I tell my literature and philosophy students that John Steinbeck insisted he was a storyteller and not a philosopher. Some of his critics dismissed him as a “third rate philosopher.” Nonetheless, the narrative in his novel Cannery Row teeters between philosophical…

The duende is a trickster, a liminal spirit. It is not an angel of inspiration, like the muse, nor is it demonic, at least not completely. The muse flies away when death is near, whereas the duende circles the edges of wounds. It is a word that stems from home…

In October of 2000, while in the throes of a bad breakup and feeling hopeless, I took a half a bottle of Ativan, and texted the only person I knew who would not judge me- my god brother David. I called David my cousin, but he wasn’t my cousin. His…

Sometimes I am guilty of getting into snits about the unfairness of the world. This condition began when I was a child- One of my first diary entries in 1981 was, “Today they released the hostages and Ronald Regan is our new president. Poor Jimmy Carter.” “Taking a negative pill”…

At the beginning of Shelter In Place, I told my classes that what we were experiencing was not distance learning, but distance learning through a pandemic that for some has been very traumatic. I told them that in the midst of a traumatic experience sometimes analytical writing is difficult, and…

“Duende And ‘Sonny’s Blues’” When we study the language that describes the blues and duende and we can notice strong similarities: The blues, says Nathaniel Mackey, like duende, bespeaks the presence and persistence of the otherwise excluded, the otherwise expelled. According to Lorca, the duende signifies, “the wounds that heal…