Unsolicited Advice for the End Times

“In 2012, the Mayans predicted the end of the world, I graduated from college and moved to New York to be a writer, and the bookseller Michael Seidenberg began writing a monthly column for The New Inquiry called “Unsolicited Advice for Living in the End Times.” I’d discovered Brazenhead Books, the salon and bookstore Michael ran out of his apartment, during his brief writing stint, and I still remember his one sentence pitch for the column: “It’s short and has pictures.” He told this to anyone who listened, shrugging and raising his bushy eyebrows, as if to say, “What’s to lose?”

As I became a Brazenhead regular, I realized he was right about having nothing to lose and started to read the column. Just like he said, they were short and had pictures, but were also full of wisdom wrapped in layers of funny. Michael’s humor was ever present, in his way of being, as well as his writing, and even if the column seemed lighthearted, what he said had a way of sinking in and staying. Later when I was his assistant, I republished the full collection of his columns on Brazenhead’s website. At the end of his first year, he wrote: I don’t want to get all Baba Ram Dass-y on you, but the sage’s great advice to “be here now” was never more timely. Because when now becomes later, you won’t get to be here then...”

April column for Epiphany Magazine about confinement, positivity, and The End Times.

Full text here, audio below.