inspiration

An Email Experiment for Improvised Life Subscribers

For most of Improvised Life’s 10-years of publishing, I sent out each new post by email. Most readers reported viewing it as a surprising and welcome gift in their inbox every morning. Starting next week, I’m going to try that again…

Phyllida Barlow’s Fearless Embrace of Chance

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.

Powerful Scientific Imaging Shows Why Masks Work

This remarkable video captures what is normally invisible to our eyes — how masks work to slow airborne infection carried on our breath — and resolves much conflicting information about them. Essential viewing for those that wear them and those that don’t.

Ways to Eat Cherries, With a W.S. Merwin Poem

Fruit eaten in its season is even better eaten with a poem. When we stumbled on this W.S. Merwin poem, we realized we were in the last moments of cherry season. It’s a perfect accompaniment to our favorite cherry feasts.

How to Indirectly Help New Ideas Grow

We recently re-discovered “Eating Grapes Downwards” a poem we’d loved and somehow lost track of. Christian Wiman describes the mysterious creative process we cannot control, and often aren’t even aware of, but that is part of every life. With instructions for how to navigate…

Our actions entrench the power of the light on this planet. Every positive thought we pass between us makes room for more light. And if we do more than think, then our actions clear the path for even more light. That is why forgiveness and compassion must become more important principles in public life.

John Lewis

How to Eat an Apricot

Diane Ackerman’s poem “The Consolation of Apricots” gives a sense of just how far an apricot can launch you into reverie. It also gives instructions for how to eat one. I’ve added my own two-cents about how to find great apricots, and what to do if you can’t, along with a recipe for the effect of summer apricots all year long.

Risk Equivalents of Common Activities (Roz Chast)

At the New Yorker, cartoonist Roz Chast takes on the kind of equation we are seeing everywhere, of “experts” assessing the level of risk in commonly enjoyed activities of human existence.

The Ancient Formula for Gratitude

Opening at random Richard Powers’ remarkable novel The Overstory, we found the ancient formula for gratitude.

Magic Trick: Divine Ice Cream Made In a Plastic Bag

At a dinner party New Yorker food critic Hannah Goldfield attended last summer, one of the hosts served ice cream that had the mind-blowing effect of a magic trick. Here’s how, with a recipe.

Why 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.

‘The Pandemic is a Portal’ Arundhati Roy

In this short, potent video, Arundhati_Roy”reads from her essay “The Pandemic is a Portal” It is at once a question to hold in mind, an invitation, and a call to arms.

How and Why to Hang a Hammock Anywhere

When we passed a woman lazily lounging in a hammock strung between two trees in our local park, we wondered why we don’t see more people taking advantage of the many hammock opportunities that are available. IF you know how…

How 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.

Experience a Feeling of Flying, with Rumi UPDATE

We love the feeling of flying in Universal Everything’s beautiful little video and find ourselves watching it over and over; it’s amazingly refreshing to our lockdown minds. It reminds us of this Rumi poem.

Make Your Own Fire Cider for Well-Being, Cocktails, Cooking

We learned a lot from ‘How to Create Your Own Herbal Tinctures’, including Jade Mark’s compelling recipe for Fire Cider.

What “Being Like a River” Really Means (Rebecca Solnit)

Ever-incisive Rebecca Solnit shifted our view of the much-abused metaphor of rivers by describing how rivers REALLY act. And that gave us much deeper understanding of how change often happens, historically and personally.

Joy Right Now Where You Don’t Expect It

Although we’re not religious, we’ve loved being able to wander into an empty church when we find one open, for a few minutes of quiet and the particular kind of stillness they hold. Recently missing that possibility, we’ve been discovering other ways to get the feeling of respite our random visits once provided.

Nature’s Ascent: An Opera Plays to an Audience of Plants, Penguins Visit Museums…

Among the many challenges the lockdown has brought, the ascent of nature has been among the unexpected gifts. Cultural institutions are embracing that view to shift and refresh their locked-down patrons.

Linden’s Fragrance Defies Dark Times

Wearing a mask has proven to be another kind of lockdown: of the sense of smell. We’re still enjoying the sublime scent of linden in bloom now.

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