Emily Dickinson

Rocks are Useful and Sparkle with Poetry and Art

Knowing how a long lineage of artists and writers have used rocks and stones in their work expands my pleasure in those I collect for their beauty and endless uses…

How Do Your Good Ideas Make an Entrance? Knowing Can Help Bring Them to Life

When we stumbled on this image by the great Christoph Niemann at #abstractsunday, we thought: OMG, look at that fabulous doorway. What a vision! How can we get ourselves to imagine more expansively? And that got us thinking about the creative vision and where ideas come from.

An Invitation to Slow Down with Something Different: James Turell’s Beautiful Skyspace 2 Ways

Here are two virtual ways to experience Jame’s Turell’s remarkable artwork, along with a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Opened at Random: The Enlightened Heart, An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

This morning, we opened The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry and found this…

What Writing Scripts for AI Taught Her About Humans and Art

In describing what writing lines for AI like Siri is like, Mariana Lin nails what human to human communication actually does.

Beauty You Can Carry on a Bicycle (Loes Heerink, Emily Dickinson)

Self-taught photographer Loes Heerink spent days on bridges capture the diversity of bicycle vendors in Hanoi. Her photo series “Vendors from Above” reminded us of the beauty you can carry on a bicycle…

Create Your Own Crazy Vision (Marc Johns, Emily Dickinson, et al)

The great Marc Johns’ sign NAILS Improvised Life’s essential message and practice. We learn by example…(and poetry).

As Life Gets Longer It Gets Shorter. Celebrate!

Every person who ever lived feels Time. These days, the general rule when turning a big number birthday is to freak out. But there are other routes to take…

Wildly Beautiful Visualizations of Your Brain Actively Perceiving Itself RIGHT NOW

Self Reflected is a series of complex, wildly beautiful, artistic representations of neural pathways showing what consciousness looks like — YOUR consciousness, this very moment.

It is In (Y)OUR Self-Interest to Be Very Tender (Jenny Holzer +Emily Dickinson)

We never really considered the word tender until we saw artist Jenny Holzer’s extraordinary message years ago. What if we tried it for an hour/day/week?

‘Crisis is a Hair’ (Hair Poetry, Visual and Otherwise)

Images and poems of and about hair remind us of the meaning and possibilities, both creative and metaphysical, of the mysterious fiber.

A Time-Limited Mind Sharpening Practice

After our friend Tim Chegwidden suffered a stroke years ago at age 54, he had to painstakingly learn how to speak again. He immediately started figuring out systems to do the thing he loved most: express the complexities of what he read or saw. Not satisfied with the level of nuance of the words he used, he developed a powerful practice to deepen them.

Compassionate Self-Criticism, in the Third Person

When performance coach Kate Conklin was teaching me Alexander Technique via Skype a couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that she often critiqued herself in the third person when she was assessing her own actions or work. She said that it made her kinder to herself, as she is when she works with a student. I’ve been trying this…

Make Your Motivators Powerful

On my office wall, I tape images that inspire, motivate, and hearten me. Recently, I taped up a greeting card that said PROCEED AS IF SUCCESS IS INEVITABLE. Although the words make great sense, they curiously had little impact…UNTIL something compelled me to pair it with a photo I’d clipped from a magazine: Big lesson in what a MOTIVATOR can be.

May Your Life Be Full of Open Books

I’ve taken to leaving books open all over my apartment so I can wander by and read or look at something that I’m mulling or want in my field of vision. It often feels as though gifts or messages from amazing people are scattered throughout my space…