Daniel Coffeen

All things — all texts — are to be read. And, in fact, all things are always already read.

A good reading is life affirming. I’ll one up that: a critical reading creates life! It takes what you think you’re seeing, what you think is done, and shows you whole other worlds.

Metonymy is not synecdoche.

I had a female friend who would always disparage young women who dated older guys (of course, said disparagement was aimed not very subtly at me).

We are always entering a world in progress.

Language is weird. It’s a kind of system that includes all these different elements — words, punctuation, meanings — and the way the elements combine, that is, grammar.

Change the shape and you change experience.

If I truly affirm everything, feel that everything that happens is as it’s supposed to happen because it did in fact happen, what do I make of the intense grief I experience with the loss of a loved one?

The weather is a complex system just as you and me are complex systems.

So much of our therapeutic culture enacts the very sickness from which we supposedly seek remedy.

Recently, my son has been experiencing some intense anxiety.

Many people — mostly women — assume porn to be a substitute for the “real thing.”