Forced by a virus to endure a long convalescence in bed, it was impossible for Elisabeth Tova Bailey to imagine a future; “All of life was out of reach.” Only it wasn’t. A forest snail that took up residence on her nightstand, living in a pot of violets, would change her life and become the impetus for a remarkable book.
Read MoreNew Year’s Resolutions: Let’s NOT ‘Budget for New Management’
In our long life, we’ve learned a great deal about New Years resolutions from abandoning them so many times that we finally got with the fact that they generally didn’t work. We relate mightily to this wise, funny little video we found in Instagram…
Read MoreA Guide to Glimmers and Where to Find Them
Lately, we’ve been hearing about glimmers, tiny moments of awe and beauty that spark joy, calm, well-being and help our nervous systems feel relaxed and balanced (the opposite of stressors and triggers.) Glimmers can be the seemingly ordinary things, as well as very unexpected ones.
Read More‘The Times are Urgent; Let us Slow Down” (Bob Dylan and Bayo Akomolafe)
During the months we’ve been slowing down in an attempt to decipher and heal an illness, potent writings on the theme of slow have come to us randomly, lending insight into what we’d been discovering but didn’t quite yet know, and a kind of guidance.
Read MoreWendell Berry’s Reminder
When I heard Wendell Berry reading his poem “How to Be a Poet”, I thought: that’s exactly what I’ve been doing to heal myself of the strange illness I’ve been dealing with.
Read MoreZiwe’s Meditation on Feet and Shame
Writing about the public rating of her feet on the celebrity foot database wikiFeet— who knew?!— She describes the strange reality of social scrutiny and all the shit it puts in our heads and that we have to find ways to antidote. Which she does, in the last beautiful paragraph…
Read MoreThe Question We Ponder from Annie Ernaux’s “The Years”
The Years by Annie Ernaux was published in 2008 and won the Nobel Prize in 2022, 14 years later. THAT’s how complex and original its vision and ideas were; it took a long time to be seen. One passage haunts us, or perhaps better put, has become a question we ask ask ourselves daily.
Read MoreShort Meditations to Get You Through (Vivek Murthy, Wild Man Yogi Bryan)
Dr. Vivek Murthy, 21st Surgeon General of the United States and a Yogi Bryan, a wild man meditator we recently discovered, share their quick meditations for regaining connection and calm. Similar practices, VERY different approaches.
Read MoreJacques D’Amboise: “Friendship is Not a Straight Line”
We’ve watched this beautiful clip many times, delighting in the late, legendary dancer Jacques d’Amboise’s insights into the rituals that define friendships and social interaction. We hadn’t known we were dancing…
Read MoreApologies from H.C Westermann, Holton Rower, Buson…
The very best letter of apology we can imagine is a strangely wonderful love letter artist H.C. Westermann’s wrote to his wife Joanna Beall Westermann. “Dear Sweety”, it starts. Then he goes at it. It got us thinking about apologies…
Read MoreTo Make the Unwanted Wanted (Jane Hirschfield)
The New York Times’ Ezra Klein’s conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield yielded many remarkable insights. But what dazzled us most was her reading of her poem A Cedary Fragrance, and the story behind her writing it, and its big lesson and challenge.
Read MoreAnnals of Guerilla Action: Outrage and Chalk Fuel a Powerful Statement
Improvised Life’s vast archive is liberally peppered with posts about guerilla actions: small-scale actions that deploy subversive messages in unexpected ways. A recent one in the middle of a busy New York City crosswalk gets our admiration for its daring, power and simplicity.
Read MoreAdvice for An Anxiety Situation (Maira Kalman)
Maria Kalman recently arrived in our Inbox with an invitation to buy a signed and numbered edition she created. It’s called “Don’t Think too Much” and it has much to say on the subject and how not to… (think too much)
Read MoreTransforming Ordinary Materials Just for the Hell of It
We love when some visionary soul shifts ordinary objects into the visually beautiful and surprising. And reveals the ordinary for what it really it: material full of possibilities…
Read MoreNature’s Operating Manual
In her seminal 1997 book Biomimicry, Janine Benyus introduced the notion that we could be better off by simply mimicking the ways problems are solved in nature. Although usually formatted as a numbered list, we saw them for the first time as a single sentence, set up like a poem. And like a good poem, it makes for a radical shift of view…
Read MoreLesson in Perception from the Largest Living Being on Earth*
We recently learned about Pando, a clonal aspen tree that is one of the largest and oldest beings on earth. Over 100 acres wide, it has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. It is a lesson in how we see, and don’t.
Read More‘Dream Bed’ Dreams…
My deconstructing mind was smitten with the possibilities of a “dream bed” I stumbled on on Instagram. So I went on the hunt to figure out what it would take to make it, and in the process, learned a LOT, including about myself.
Read MoreLaraaji’s 3-Minute Laughter Meditation
In addition to some interesting music, we found a fat nugget in “Shocking the Consciousness”, Amanda Petrushich’s piece on 80-year-old radical/New Age composer Laraaji in The New Yorker: His online laughter meditations designed to help you generate your own medicinal sound.
Read MoreAlex Katz Flings Us Into The Immediate Present
We recently returned to the Guggenheim Museum with a singular purpose: to revisit the handful of remarkable late paintings artist Alex Katz made of trees, lake, night. Those are really not the subject. He paints the sensation of seeing.
Read MoreA Simple Shift of ‘Should’ Sparks Possibility Thinking
How many times have we heard the exhortation: ‘Don’t ‘should’ on yourself.’? Sometimes that’s easier said that done. We have some pretty fierce ‘shoulds’ in our heads that carry the weight of obligation and duty, and a narrow view of choices. Then we tried a simple shift.
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