writing Archives | Üma Kleppinger

ESSAY: The Poison is the Policy

How a walk in the woods became a snapshot of empire [This piece was originally published on Substack.] In a vain attempt to escape the reality of navigating systemic failure at every turn on top of all the imperial fuckery being imposed upon the world—especially in the South West Asian North Africa (SWANA) region (commonly…

One morning, during the predawn zazen—in between the velvet, inky silence and the deep, sonorous tones of the rin-gong—there is an especially long meditation period, or so it seems. Time seems fluid here, elastic. A minute feels like an hour. An hour is a lifetime is the blink of an eye. Time is everything and has no meaning at all.