We know lots of wonderful poems of gratitude but only one that manages to express thanks amidst the very hard things that befall us in life. It is by W.S. Merwin and called simply “Thanks”. We find it remarkable and hard and heartbreaking and heartening, all that complexity of feeling, which echoes so perfectly that which we are living now…
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Over the years, we’ve come to to view illness as a path that can, if we are lucky or open to it, provide a lot of illumination and healing. When we mentioned this to our remarkable physical therapist Rachel Miller Williams she nodded and offered this surprising view.
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During a particularly stressful and exhausting time in her life, Tricia Hersey had an epiphany: She started napping where ever she had a few moments. It was transformative and led her to research the idea of rest as a healing mechanism and form of resistance against societal oppression. It would become her ministry, and she The Nap Bishop.
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When a friend sent us news that legendary New Yorker cartoonist George Booth had died, we realized that his work has provided joy, comfort, and uplift throughout our entire adult life. In a single drawing, he managed to convey the wild complexity of ordinary lives through the simplest of details, embedded with a deeply life-affirming message.
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We recently stumbled on this video the great Chistophe Niemann created to accompany a clip from Terry Gross’ last interview with 80-year-old Maurice Sendak, a few months before his death. It is full of wise, achingly tender words. Our friend Maureen Rolla turned them into a kind of blessing.
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When I hear the word “radical” used in the context of personal change —whether a book, a course, a workshop — I generally pass it by. It’s so overused and overblown, I’ve come to mistrust it. But in the past few months, I’d heard a number of smart, curious, level-headed people mention Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. Among the trove of very wise and helpful ideas, I especially love this passage about saying yes, perfection, self-comparison and….biscuits.
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Seeing images of Brice Marden drawing and painting with sticks expanded our notion of what we might use to make our own mark, as a way of revealing what lays hidden in our mind and heart. What medium or implement or movement will unlock the hidden, wordless part of ourselves?
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Reading “Now What? The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books” in the New Yorker, we were excited to learn about a kid’s book series we’d missed and so would have the pleasure of diving into. But it was the very last paragraphs of the piece that struck home and got us thinking about a new view of regret.
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Designer Russel Wright had the habit of shaping parts of the land around Manitoga, his home and studio in upstate New York, into “rooms”. Rather than making a room, I love the idea of an outdoor room coming into being simply by finding it or naming it, as happened when I stumbled on some ancient Beeches. Their branches arch down to the ground to define the space around them, making quiet leafy rooms. The feeling of hanging out in them is extraordinary. Wendell Berry nailed it.
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We hadn’t thought of a website having the ability to act as a sanctuary until we read about Laurel Schwulst’s odd, charming Firefly Sanctuary It is at once a digital space that mirrors a physical one — her Brooklyn apartment — and a quiet meditation on the “invisible, mental counterparts” to visible, physical things.
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We found many compelling ideas in this New York Times interview with Chloe Cooper Jones about her new book Easy Beauty and the disconnect between “our real self and the way that self is perceived”. We’ve been trying out the remarkable technique she learned that she found provides unexpected “agency and peace and power”.
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When brilliant chronicler of American history David McCullough died recently, two people sent me excerpts from obituaries, so apt was his wisdom for Improvised Life. Here’s his brilliant advice for becoming a good storyteller and why he used a 1940 typewriter to write his award-winning books.
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The image of a Serbian Orthodox church inside an oak tree got us thinking about trees being used as churches. What are the qualities of trees that make them a place for sanctuary, reflection, rest, prayer. We found the answer in Jo Shapcott’s glorious poem “I Go Inside the Tree”…
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Recently, the always-surprising Elan Kiderman Ullendorff of Deep Sea Diving Newsletter featured stuff he found on Etsy by selecting “Highest Price” to hone his search results; he stumbled upon an extreme edge of the normally-placid site.
Nestled among “10 extremely expensive items on Etsy” is the Erotic Bouncy Castle and a brilliant life strategy.
Amid the daily deluge of bleak, enervating news about the effects of climate change, we’ve been noticing a strain of defiance: Messages that engender energy and activism rather than despair and paralysis. They offer a thought-provoking and heartening view.
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New York Magazine’s recent article about designer Todd Oldham’s house in the Poconos is a revelation: an over-the-top, completely original color-riot of a country house. Its many cool ideas are driven by an unexpectedly liberating design philosophy.
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It took over five years for Leonard Cohen to write Hallelulah, arguably his most beloved song. Although we’ve listened to Hallelulah many times, we did not get its simple message as powerfully as hearing Cohen’s words in an early interview, featured in the trailer of the just-released documentary about him.
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It is enough to have recognized some of ourselves in comedian Bill Bailey’s astute commentary on the British psyche (which applies to MANY others as well). When he segues into a wild riff on the expression “All things considered” at 2:37 in, we found our view of the world mightily expanded, AMAZING…
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A post-it marks a quote in The Hummingbird’s Daughter, the beautiful battered novel we found in the Little Free Library near our house. We’ve been mulling its essential lesson about allowing things to happen for weeks. And thinking about artists who use chance in their work, giving up control to allow unexpected things to happen.
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Every birthday of late, wise man Kevin Kelly shares things he learned the hard way in, through living. The lists always offer big fat nuggets of wisdom and illumination, and many things to try. Our favorite addresses our frequent dilemma of not being able to decide between two distinct choices, usually when our linear brain is packed with logical arguments for each one that leave us boggled.
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