Our friend Cara De Silva sent us a link to images of trees growing through concrete, with these words. …I was startled and grateful when I looked at these beautiful and inspiring photographs. But not only for the usual reasons. For months now I have been seeing such trees as a metaphor,
Read MoreWe were knocked out by this fragment of an interview with Tammy Duckworth in the Sunday New York Time’s Magazine. She’s the United States Representative for Illinois’s 8th congressional district who lost both legs while a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in the Iraq War: Question: When you wake up do you feel a sense of loss when you realize what…
Read MoreA video has been making the rounds of robots leaping and jumping easily from one obstacle to another. We prefer the tempering view of the many fails the robots endured, harsh face-first crashes that are as clumsy as a knocked-out boxer hitting the mat. It got us thinking about failure…
Read MoreWe recently re-discovered “Eating Grapes Downwards” a poem we’d loved and somehow lost track of. Christian Wiman describes the mysterious creative process we cannot control, and often aren’t even aware of, but that is part of every life. With instructions for how to navigate…
Read MoreWe love the feeling of flying in Universal Everything’s beautiful little video and find ourselves watching it over and over; it’s amazingly refreshing to our lockdown minds. It reminds us of this Rumi poem.
Read MoreA Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful at NYC’s Rubin Museum is a powerful interactive display of visitor’s anxieties and hopes. As is this strategy for navigating them.
Read MoreSeth Boyden’s charming video, An Object at Rest, has changed the way I view the nearly two dozen rocks and stones I use around my space.
Read MoreWhen we stumbled on this sublime minute-and-a-half of Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling Mohammed Ali’s powerful declaration on IMPOSSIBLE came to mind.
Read MoreWe were stunned by this image of Mohammed Mohiedin Anis listening to music amidst the dust and debris, fallen-in windows and crumbling walls of his bedroom in the al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. It holds an essential lesson and reminder.
Read MoreWe like to open books at random to see what chunk of synchronous wisdom they might offer. Recently, we found this description of Leonardo’s wild, endearing culinary FAIL…
Read MoreRichard Turner is considered the world’s greatest card sharp. His prowess at card magic is astonishing, all the more so because he is blind. Here are his principles for overcoming obstacles.
Read MoreIn our dog-eared A Year From Monday, we read this astonishing story from John Cage, in Lecture on Commitment. As usual, it changed our view completely.
Read MoreGetting STUCK, whether in a relationship, decision-making process, or career path, is very much part of being human. In our productivity-obsessed society, it is an especially big concern. Here are some approaches we’ve found that work.
Read MoreMy wife and I had been interested in small, micro-sized startup ideas for over 16 years, at one point pursuing six projects at once. As you can imagine, we were spread so thin, none of the ideas took off. So we began looking for a simple way to manage the chaos of startup ideas and…
Read MoreThis wonderful sign is a fragment from Mary Oliver’s longish 3-part poem Evidence. As usual with her poems, there several passages that we could see on that sign board, which is, curiously, the kind used by churches.(Oh for a church where Mary Oliver is quoted and read.) Here are some beauties, which together, make their…
Read MoreWe were struck by Seth Godin’s recent post about the two lists we seem to carry with us at all times, which become apparent during a crisis or moment of doubt: one is the positives, the other, the negatives we perceive in our lives. His point: we have a choice in which we choose and…
Read More(Watch video HERE.) While compiling our post about Men Wearing Skirts, we stumbled on a picture of athlete Noah Galloway, missing both an arm and part of his leg, embarking on a grueling physical competition while wearing a skirt. Who is this guy, we wondered? So we went to his website to find out. On December…
Read MoreOur friend Chris Eldredge alerted us to a fashion trend he’s noticed: Men Wearing Skirts. He said that he’s seen a number of stylishly dressed men wearing skirts lately —definitely NOT in drag. Interesting. A search took us to The Facebook page of Women Wear Pants. Let Men Wear Skirts, which features a lot of…
Read MoreOne of our favorite all time books about the creative process is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It is NOT just about writing, but is full of lessons about living creatively.
Read More(Video link here.) Long-time ‘improvised life’ reader Sahana sent this hour-long documentary about Parcour (also known as free-running) with this note: “leaping and turning obstacles into stepping stones – …almost like dancing . a philosophy of movement .” There’s LOTS of beautiful parcour as well as illuminating glimpses into the inside of the practice that is very…
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