inspiration

“Onward to What?” Katherine Grody’s Fortifying Rant on Aging

Grody has a way of talking turkey about aging that we first wrote about in “@MandyPatinkin’s Heartening Reality Sandwiche”: honest, sometimes ambivalent, funny, heartening. This little tonifying video continues the conversation.

A Blind Painter’s Lessons in Seeing (Sargy Mann)

When landscape artist Sargy Mann went totally blind in 2005, he assumed there were no options left. But since a blank canvas was stretched in his studio,and paints had been mixed, he thought, “I wonder would happen if I gave this a go?”

How to Keep Cooler and Use Less AC

This simple lesson we learned from an expert in ventilation helped us cool down the fierce summers in our hot top floor apartment, and lessened our air conditioner use and costs. Some days we even glimpse the feeling that illustrator Monica Ramos evokes in so many of her artworks…

Hot Weather Joy: Communal Water Music (Hermeto Pasoal, Vanuatu Women, Stephen Nachmanovitch, )

Listening to the water music of women from the northern Vanuatu and Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal takes us into the realm of joy, and gives us ideas for our own hot weather revelry. Steven Nachmanovitch, tells us how to access our own inner music…

Your Wisdom App + Clint Eastwood on How Not to Get Old

Frequent contributor Susan Dworski threw this compelling video over my transom, accompanied by her thoughts about the apps she’s been seeing lately selling all manner of salvation. She asks a big question and points to a surprising path…

Summer Outdoor Rug Thing

Every time I see this photograph of a garden festooned with vintage rugs, I want to beam myself there Star Trek-style and lounge, reading, drinking tea, napping, with friends or alone. It reminds me of Morocco where the hot, dry weather encourages making outdoor environments with rugs. We can create them too. at least for a party’s worth of hours.

Will Real Self-Help Please Stand UP?

After reading a New Yorker article on America’s biggest selling books, many of which are “self-help” I realized I’d read many of them and none helped me help myself (although plenty of other things in my life have). Soon after, I stumbled on the penultimate self-help advice.

A Question to Maintain Stillness, Attention and Flow

I rely on my tightly edited instagram feed to bring ideas and wonders right to me when I need them. Then a powerful quote from Saul Bellow sparked an essential question.

Erling Kagge on ‘The Secret Bond Between Slowness And Memory, Emotion, Intelligence’

“The pace we choose when we walk can be decisive for how we think”, writes explorer and philospher Erling Kagge in Walking One Step at a Time. Apply it more broadly and it becomes a startling life principle that can profoundly shift everyday experience…

Call-and-Response to Merton’s RainText: ‘The Beautifully Ordinary’

Every week, unexpected messages fly over my transom, many from stranger-friends who have read something I’ve sent into the world via Improvised Life, in a kind of call-and-response. Like this illuminating beauty from Katherine Davich, a powerful spill of rain memory sparked by Thomas Merton’s RainText.

A Spectacular Maasai Jumping Dance Sparks a Transformative Question

We don’t know the deeper meanings of this spectacular jumping dance performed by young Maasai warriors as part of a coming-of-age ceremony. We love the forthright vitality, energy, joy of it, a feeling we want to have starting each day. It got us thinking about Ikigai, the Japanese concept we wrote about a couple of years ago, and the big question it asks.

Thomas Merton’s RainText: ‘All That Speech Pouring Down’

The very best words on rain we’ve read are from American hermit, mystic, priest, Thomas Merton. He wrote it one rainy night in his hermitage at the Abby of Gethsemeni in Kentucky. It has shown us rain in a new way…

Pictures Hung in Unexpected Places Expand the View

Ever since we spotted this house with framed art on the outside, we’ve been thinking about wonderful places to hang pictures that most people don’t use.

Thoughts on Miracles (Charlie Allenson, Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Cosmos)

A while back, we posted “Let’s Save Charlie’s Life”, about our friend Charlie Allenson who needed a kidney transplant to save his life, Charlie got his transplant through an anonymous donor touched by one of the messages asking for help that Charlie’s many friends and colleagues sent out via social media. It got us thinking about miracles, and we found insight from Whitman, Mary Oliver, and Charlie himself.

Ways to Honor The Mother Trees (Susan Simard, W.S. Merwin)

We have marveled at Susan Simard since we realized she was the model for the fearless, hermetic tree botanist in Richard Price’s wondrous tree-centric novel The Overstory. Her new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Ancient Wisdom of the Forest about the intricate underground communication network trees create and depend upon got us thinking about the perfect gift, for Mother’s day or otherwise.

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