We were dismayed to hear that artist Phyllida Barlow passed away. She was a kind of role model for us, a 78-year old woman who taught for decades until finding fame late in her life for her daring monumental sculptures. We first fell in love and admiration when we watched trailer to the film “Phyllida”…
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Periodically I revisit this short clip of Julia Child flipping a potato pancake, “a daring thing to do” on her ’70s television show where flubs and mess-ups were left as-is. Child ad libs essential wisdom that applies to any daring endeavor, and life itself.
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One of the best things to come out of the months of Covid-19 lockdown has been extraordinary films from art galleries and museums. One of the best of is about the English sculptor Phyllia Barlow. It provides an illuminating counterpoint to the many life questions that the virus has thrown into relief.
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To celebrate his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly compiled some of the gold he’s learned over his seven decades. The brilliant list provides a roadmap to wholeness and positivity.
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This morning we opened our Collected Poems of W.S. Merwin to the poet counting blessings and expressing gratitude. Which we find ourselves doing as we read it.
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When we read 50 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature, we felt like we were reading poems, each one complete unto itself.
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In her 1973 essay “On the Perfection Underlying Life”, artist Agnes Martin addresses the rewards of “the panic of complete helplessness”; the real meaning of mistakes, and an unexpected path to contentment.
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We were stunned at how perfect these words from Pema Chodron are in this very unsettling time and how much they teach on a purely personal level.
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At the height of a recent crisis a few months ago, our friend Chris Eldredge send me this note: I’ve been reading Jack Kornfield’s “A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life” and saw this. I thought it might interest you. ( I changed a bit of the wording where…
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The 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…
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This morning while engrossed in redesigning ‘improvised life’, I forgot about the eggs I was boiling on the stove. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the kitchen. When I explored, I discovered firm little pellets of egg yolk scatter-shot across the kitchen. Once the water had boiled away in the little copper…
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We know this was Maria Robledo‘s favorite cup. Broken in an instant, another kind of beauty came through (which the inimitable Maria ‘got’ and showed us). The handle looks like a perfect little sculpture of an ear. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower…
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(Video link here.) We don’t remember how we stumbled on this video by Kathleen Hanna, a New York City-based artist best known for her groundbreaking performances in the seminal 90′s punk band, Bikini Kill, and her more recent multimedia group, Le Tigre. She made it to accompany the song Let’s Run. We find it curiously uplifting: a…
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The other day, I accidentally knocked a treasured cup off a table and watched, in the slow motion of a car accident, as it crashed onto the stone floor. It was gone in a moment, an object whose beauty I’d enjoyed daily since my friend Suzanne Shaker had given it to me over a decade…
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This art work by Egor Kraft is echoing what a lot of people are finally getting with (or trying to): making mistakes are a way to learn, part of the path, the way things work… Yeah! (The guy loves papering the streets with signs by the way. Check these out.) via uncopy Related posts: discover…
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Another insightful mind-expanding post from Anne Herbert of Peace and Love and Noticing the Details, quoted here in full because it is so perfect: Jack Nicholson, the actor, said he wished everyday life were like making a movie so when you messed up you could say, “Take two,” and have a whole other chance. “That’s…
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This morning a reader wrote to alert me, very gently and carefully, to a glaring typo in yesterday’s post on self-publishing. I wrote “elicit” when I meant “illicit”. Yikes! It got me thinking about making mistakes, (in public, no less) like this one made last night, when I was writing the post late, blind after a…
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