In my lifetime I have seen democracy begin to expand, not only to include those who have been excluded, but to provide a listening arena, a vocabulary, an intelligent reception for stories that have been buried. Not just stories of the disenfranchised and the marginalized, but marginalized and disenfranchised histories even in the lives of the accepted and the privileged.

It is a grief over the fate of the Earth that contains within it a joyful hope, that we might reclaim this Earth.

Each life reverberates in every other life. Whether or not we acknowledge it, we are connected, woven together in our needs and desires, rich and poor, men and women alike.

Self-reflection is a desire felt by the body, as well as the soul. As dancers, healers, and saints all know, when you turn your attention toward even the simplest physical process - breath, the small movements of the eyes, the turning of a foot in midair - what might have seemed dull matter suddenly awakens.

Far more frightening than the thought of dying was the experience of erasure already occurring in my life. My fear of becoming someone who did not count.

Although the many virtues that courtesans possessed were employed to defy circumstances, the role they played depended on the same circumstances over which they triumphed- conditions which to, fortunately for modern women, no longer exist.

Even in the grimmest of circumstances, a shift in perspective can create startling change.