by Erica Spriggs It is a Friday evening at the San Diego Theosophy Center, and few people are talking. The room is warm despite the open window. Professor Harold Jaffe is wearing black, a a mandarin-collar shirt, sunglasses, slacks. He approaches the podium gradually, watching for the sudden movement of extended legs as people settle […]
Autre Review of Harold Jaffe’s Death Café
[BOOK REVIEW] SUSAN GRACE REVIEWS HAROLD JAFFE’S NEW BOOK, DEATH CAFÉ April 14, 2016 Harold Jaffe, progressive, social activist, and author of 24 innovative books, including Othello Blues, Revolutionary Brain, Anti-Twitter, and Induced Coma, has planted another mine in the minds of readers worldwide with his latest work, Death Café. The title alone, Death Café, […]
Provisional Notes on Art Brut.
by Erica Spriggs Art brut, also known as outsider art, is not merely an expression of “madness.” It goes beyond the constructs of language into a deeper realm of consciousness. It disobeys the formula of lines, color, and composition; it becomes itself as it deconstructs itself, as the audience attempts to find a reference that […]
Harold Jaffe’s Sacred Geography in NEW ORLEANS REVIEW
Ganges Dawn Predawn, everyone’s awake, Kashi’s jumping. Excluding the homeless thousands who are unawake. I’m walking cautiously to the ghats in the semi-dark through littered streets, trying to distinguish trash from cardboard and newspaper humps of low-castes sleeping, groaning while sleeping. Do they dream while they sleep? Is it a collective dream? Has their 2000 […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 18, 2015
Caste Cannibal A newlywed couple from Varanasi were arrested over claims they dined on the Genitals of the woman’s alleged rapist after her husband murdered the alleged rapist and excised his privates. The victim’s mutilated body was found in a burnt-out tuk-tuk on a Varanasi sidestreet after the revenge attack, sparked by claims the new […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 18, 2015
Saint Mother Pope Francis has endorsed a second medical miracle attributed to the late Mother Teresa, clearing the path for the beloved nun to be elevated to sainthood next year, the online Roman Catholic newspaper Avvenire reported Thursday. Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II in a fast-tracked ceremony in 2003, in the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 13, 2015
SuicideBomb I am a female Untouchable. You prefer Dalit to Untouchable. You do not like the name Untouchable for public relations. Even as you kill us and flog us without touching us The munitions strapped across my body touch me. West of Manikarnika, the burning ghat, is the Golden Temple devoted to Lord Shiva. Barefoot, […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 12, 2015
Sacred Geography I give the beggar-sadhu in his tattered saffron dhoti with open sores on his arms a 50-rupee note. He is barefoot; he turns and pads away toward another tourist. His is not a sacred begging performed in imitation of Lord Shiva. The Varanasi sadhus who live in and around the burning ghats are […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 10, 2015
Chai Twins Monkey Chai shop. 7:30 PM. The dhobi’s workday which began at 6 AM is over. He’s having his customary plastic glass of masala chai, sitting on one of the stools at the large wooden table. His name is Mohan, he is of the washerman caste. His working day is limitless, but today it […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 10, 2015
Untouch They are blackened. Barefoot. Thin as reeds. Your untouchables. –You are not Hindu. You know nothing. I see them clean your privvies, quarry rocks, balance the burning upper-caste corpse on the bier with long bamboo poles. –You imagine seeing. You are not Hindu. You see nothing. Near the burning ghat, the shrunken untouchable woman […]