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Read MoreSusan Dworski spotted this cartoon a few minutes after we posted Annals of Bad Design: Uncomfortable Bathtub Surround. As usual, a New Yorker cartoon nails the zeitgeist! Thanks Susan! Related posts: xcultivating gardens real and imaginaryx xmadan kataria’s laughter yoga: laughing as a practicex
Read MoreVarieties of Disturbance, a recent New York Profile about actress Claire Danes yields many intriguing and illuminating ideas about the processes involved in her famously “volcanic performances” (of late, most notably in Homeland). Among them, Dane’s passing mention of her occasional practice of walking in circles to get “out of her head”. If I have…
Read More(Video link here.) A friend sent us this LOL video after someone told her she sometimes appears to be scowling. It seems that she suffers from occasional “bitchy resting face”, even when everything is dandy. Although we are great believers in tuning in and “reading the signs” of people’s behavior, we also know how wrong…
Read MoreWhen his guests didn’t show up, Colbert Report’s Stephen Colbert made this fab, full-of-joy, on-the-fly video of a brilliant practice we should all do: Dance to… GET LUCKY!
Read MoreRecently, we were browsing through Paperless Post looking for a virtual card to congratulate a couple we know on their twentieth anniversary of being together. We stumbled upon this image by Magnum Photographer Ferdinando Scianna and thought: that’s it! Over the past year, both members of the couple has been feeling their way, and ultimately…
Read MoreMaria Robledo sent this image of one of the first plums her plum tree yielded. What might seem like a blemish could be seen as something else althogether: the perfection (and magic) of imperfection. Thanks Maria! Related posts: brilliant graffiti: ‘you are (not) perfect’ ‘seeing’ is a practice (look what’s hidden in plain sight) ‘the…
Read MoreAnne Johnson alerted us to the extraordinary ‘Incomplete Manifesto for Growth that legendary designer and visionary Bruce Mau wrote in 1998: 43 powerful principles and practices. We’ve bolded our favorites: Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You…
Read MoreAlong with our strategy of exercising outdoors with whatever is at hand, we’ve found this heartening report in the New York Times really useful for getting ourselves to work out regularly: In a study, published last month in the journal PLoS One, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, and other institutions attempted to delineate…
Read MoreWhen we stumbled on this image, we had to look twice to see what was so clever about the use of a classic white Venetian blind. Had the blind been hung inside the doorway, it would have had a very ordinary effect; and the blind’s boxy top mechanism would have obstructed the lines of the…
Read MoreThe science of Idiotism was introduced to the Western world more than 90 years ago, in 1922, by the famous philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff. At first, according to his students, it seemed to be simply an amusing mealtime entertainment, resulting in a cosmic degree of drunkenness. But soon it became “perhaps his strangest and most innovative method of…
Read MoreBehind the scenes at ‘improvised life’ this summer, we’ve been brainstorming, mind-mapping, and working on some exciting updates to the website. But no amount of creative brainpower on our part could match the value of feedback from you, our community and our readers. We wonder if you will help us to grow and expand ‘improvised life’…
Read MoreWe found this wonderful quote in a New York Times Magazine piece about Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist with degrees in biochemistry, physics, computer science and electrical engineering, whose latest work involves designing interfaces that “will facilitate interactions between humans and nonhumans”, lately fish. Jeremijenko pretty much nailed it: our lives ARE the fundamental medium we…
Read MoreRecently at Style-Files, Danielle de Lange was mulling whether to buy the pricey ($1,000), chic or a Ikea’s cheap, rather clunky and traditional alternative, the Ektorp chair ($199), below. She inadvertently pointed out a great lesson in slip-cover assumptions: the usual, standard approach with piping or neat seams is NOT the only way to go. Paola Navone devised a…
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…
Read MoreThree years ago, we posted about Anne Herbert, the mysterious writer of Peace and Love and Noticing the Details, a blog that presented haiku-like shifts of view of the the most ordinary things. Herbert is also known for having come up with the brilliant, radical philosophy: ‘Practice Random Kindness & Senseless Acts of Beauty‘, which eventually…
Read More(Video link here.) One of the things Designer Stefan Sagmeister is known for is the seemingly radical act of taking a year long sabbatical every seven years to refresh his creative self and explore projects freely. He has much to say about sabbaticals. Our favorite bit: How important do you think a sabbatical is for…
Read MoreWhile walking in the park across the way, I passed a tree stump left behind after Hurricane Sandy. Overwhelmed with fallen trees, the Parks Department had done their best to remove the huge tree bodies with chain saws that struggled against massive trunks; the cuts were often roughly-made or incomplete like this one: a tusk…
Read MoreStumbling on this wonderful image of sculptural black-painted chairs on a wall of the La Gran Francia Hotel in Granada, Nicaragua got us thinking about ways to store un-folding chairs. This assemblage is a more playful, freeform take on the Shaker-esque practice of hanging uniform chairs on hooks (below). Then, moving too fast as we scanned…
Read More(Video link here.) Apparently, some readers were turned off by Louis C.K.’s vulgar, and to our minds perspective-inducing reflections on “what comes with a basic life”. Susan Dworski sent us this brilliant few minutes of Steve Martin as the Great Flydini as “an antidote”. Like all great magic, it appears to just happen— an improvision…
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