A NEW BOOK

I'm just beginning to put out word about my new book of essays, now available at Amazon. It's called A Serious Conversation With Myself: Reflections On the Approach of Age, and the title tells you pretty much what the book is about. Once I had put together this collection of short essays--my favored medium--I asked my friend, the artist Marsha Barron, if she would consider contributing some images, and she came up with a truly beautiful series of small paintings; one of them is reproduced on the cover...

Marsha Effron Barron, cover painting

... and several others in the body of the text. My friend Amy Inouye, with whom I have worked before, did a wonderful job on the cover and interior design.

I feel confident in saying that readers who have enjoyed my essays in the past with recognize my voice and my attempts to come to terms with myself and the world around me, and will enjoy this new collection. Several books have been generated by this blog: you may remember Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce; Mind Work; and Slow Looking: the Art of Looking at Art. You will not find them on the bestseller list of the New York Times--or indeed any other major newspapers--but they have been well received by many readers who find resonance in the thoughts they explore.

Marsha Effron Barron, "Transcendent"

Marsha Effron Barron, "Beyond"

Marsha Effron Barron, "Between"

These books come from the heart and mind of a man who calls himself "an aspiring Buddhist", because I find in only Buddhism the wisdom and the solace I need to satisfy my spiritual aspirations. I am not a religious and certainly not a pious person, and am deeply skeptical of much that substitutes too easily in our culture for true spiritual practice. Buddhism affirms that skepticism; it is, in my understanding, about questions, not answers--the kind of questions that lead me ever more profoundly into myself and the experience of my humanity.

This Conversation is a further pursuit of those questions as I leave behind me all pretense of youth--and even middle age!--and explore what it means to be growing old and needing to consider in all seriousness the prospect of death. I have no earth-shattering observations or insight to share, rather simply the experience of one man who wishes to live a conscious and compassionate life.