The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Life many gay people of my generation, I would not behave like a teenager until I was in my twenties.

Most people don't even try to get what they want because of the painful reckoning with their parents it entails.

Rich is not writing about transcending this world... But about transforming it. Here, and now. And what hope do we have of changing the world if we can't change our sorry-ass selves? As wisdom tends to do, the poem reveals something very simple that's been here all along: We are not the center of everything. But we are a part of everything.

The only thing to transcend is the idea that there's something to transcend. Nirvana is samsara. I finally got the memo.

Over the course of my life, as I have made my Houdini-like escapes from one self-imposed constraint after another, a question haunts me with increasing insistence. How many levels does this game have?

There are two ways to surpass your parents. Ones is to achieve the thing they had hoped for. One is somewhat easier: just to live longer.

It's a world gone mad! Pacifists paying for boot camp! Feminists learning to pole dance! Geeks flipping tractor tires! And the trends keep coming!

Why have I spent so many hours of my life--very possibly as many as are actually recommended--exercising?!

My transformation, thanks in part to Adrienne Rich, was easier than hers had been.

We're a nation of giant toddlers, dragging our blankets and bottles everwhere we go!