Instead of a mirror over the sink, this bathroom has a framed charcoal portrait. We wondered what it would be like to see an artwork and not dive right into our own image, as we all do first thing in the morning? So we tried it and found it to be a surprisingly potent guerrilla action…
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After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, filmmaker Derek Jarman bought an austere tar-painted fisherman’s cottage in sight of a nuclear power station in the bleak shingle landscape on the southeast coast of England. It would prove to be an act of creative vision as unique as those Jarman realized in his films.
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When uber-journalist Bibi Baskin was asked what she planned to be doing when she retired she replied, “Nothing.” It is a pursuit she has longed for. Still it is not always easy to do given the fierce demands of a society that values productivity above most else.
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Seeing a single firefly in a field in New York City sparked several haiku, and coincided with astonishing research on the magical insect.
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Texas Beeworks‘ Erika Thompson’s videos have become a sensation, documenting her adventures calmly moving whole colonies of bees out of hives that that have formed in the midst of people’s lives: under a pool umbrella, in a patio chair, an old tire, a water meter, compost bin, the walls of a house. They are mesmerizing to watch as much for the view into the workings of wild hives as for Thompson’s relaxed, fearless self-assurance.
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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.
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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?”
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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…
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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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“Languishing” perfectly describes the unsettling emotional state so many of us find ourselves in a solid year into the pandemic. We looked deeper into its meaning, and found insight in art, music, poetry…
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After David Saltman described his remarkable experience seeing Alan Watts give a talk in the 1970s, we hunted down some video of the essential astonishing lesson. Which led to way more…
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