We’re loving comic artist Edith Zimmerman’s wonderful site,, Drawing Links. It features comics that tell the story of an experience she’s had along with links she’s found apropos. Subjects include Time, Tao Te Ching, Home Decor… Here’s a favorite…
Read MoreWhy Starting Each Day with a Poem is ‘As Necessary as Bread’
Eight years ago, afriend and I discovered that reading – or listening to – a poem has a hugely beneficial effect. Here’s the backstory, the poets we rely on, and some poetry.
Read MoreHow We Manage Our Distracted Mindset and Get Working
We’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the strangely distracted mindset caused by the limbo of Coronavirus. Here’s a way we’ve found to manage it.
Read MoreEssential Principles of Nonviolence to Live: Martin Luther King Jr. and The Dalai Lama
What would Martin Luther King, Jr have done in response to the brazen murder of a black man by a white policeman? As waves of protest, some violent, sweeping our country, we found the answer in King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence* and again in The Dalai Lama’s Essential Teachings.
Read MoreAtul Gawande’s Solid Science: 5 Keys to Lifting Lockdown
Amidst contradictory guidance from the government, we’re putting our faith in wiseman physician Atul Gawande’s carefully-reasoned approach.
Read MoreA Closet Nook for Sleeping or Writing
While we’re home social distancing, finding usable home ideas for when things blow over fortifies us to practice possibility thinking.
Read MoreRadio Garden, Planting Seeds Around the World and in Hearts
When Radio Garden starts to load, the words “planting seeds” appears on the screen. Then a virtual globe appears around which you travel to tune into thousands of live radio stations around the world. It is magic.
Read MoreA Poem to Transform the Pandemic
We had not heard of poet Lynn Ungar before we saw her poem Pandemic. It offers a deeply affirming way to view this “strange and terrible” time, referencing an ancient practice.
Read MoreSonny Rollins on Losing Yourself In the Divine and His Sabbatical Playing on the Williamsburg Bridg
This sublime short film is about “saxophone colossus” Sonny Rollins’ two-year musical sabbatical playing on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge and what he found there.
Read MoreWilliam Forsythe on ‘Choreographing Your Own Role Within the Choreography’
In his beautiful kinetic choreographies of pendulums, artist William Forsythe draws our awareness to ways we negotiate and choreograph our paths…
Read MoreTake a Lousy Book and Make it into Poetry, like Mary Ruefle’s Beautiful Erasures
We were knocked out by selections from poet Mary Ruefle’s beautiful ”erasure books”, poetry made by whiting out words in old books. We also discovered Wite-Out is a potent, paint-like art material.
Read MoreWhat to Do When Sleep is Like an Angry Sea (Simple Things that Help You Sleep)
Charlotte Arene’s remarkable stop motion animation captures the restless agitation of not sleeping well as though roiled by an angry sea. It’s a feeling many of us know well. Here is my list of tiny steps that can help you sleep, learned by trying them on myself.
Read MoreHow to be Clear: Walk the Wind with Natalie Diaz, Ada Limón, Theo Jansen
Uitwaaien is an untranslatable Dutch word for a simple, transformative practice you can do almost any time. I came to understand it more deeply through art and poetry that expands the meaning of “air”.
Read MoreKraft Paper Dispensers That Let Your Write On the Walls, and Elsewhere
Kraft paper is so wildly useful that if I had the room in my city apartment, I’d keep a roll on a wall to have easy access when the mood/need hits.
Read MoreSlomo Followed THIS Principle To Change His Life and Transcend the Trappings of the Material World
The impetus for Dr. John Kitchen’s radical life change into the skater Slomo was the answer a very old man gave him when he asked, “What is the secret to living so long?”
Read MorePatti Smith: How to Reread a Favorite Book Three-Dimensionally
We were casting about for a new book to read when we came across Patti Smith’s technique for rereading personal favorites “three-dimensionally, cubistically, from several angles.
Read MoreThe Ear is The Way to the Heart
This huge little insight about listening startled us awake! And got us thinking about the powerful practice we all do daily…
Read MoreStephen Nachmanovitch’s ‘The Art of IS’ Decodes Improvising As a Way of Life
YoYo Ma described The Art of IS as “a philosophical meditation on living, living fully, living in the present.” We find it full of surprising ideas that are also incredibly helpful.
Read MoreOscar Murillo: Airplane Seat as Art Studio, Flight as a Sacred ‘Other’ Space
Columbian artist Oscar Murillo’s view of his singular seat on a airplane flight as a sacrad studio space will change your view of air travel.
Read MoreVarieties of YES: A Zen View, John Cage, Mary Oliver, James Joyce and the Katz’s Deli Orgasm
Thirty + years ago, the world witnessed Meg Ryan’s perfection of a faked orgasm in Katz’s Deli, we’ve been thinking about great, transformative yeses we’ve written about or experienced.
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