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.
Read More
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.
Read More
“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…
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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…
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
“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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Since Kevin Kelly last published his 68 Bits Of Seriously Good Advice a year ago for his 68th birthday, he’s come up with 99 more pieces of wisdom. Like last year’s, it’s a brilliant list, creating something of a guide for living.
Read More
One morning, I found myself listening to poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge reading Wonder from her book A Treatise on Stars. I was transfixed, calmed, transported by her voice and the story it told. It proved a surprising lesson in seeing stars, and the connection between wonder and not knowing.
Read More
These words from the famous sculptor’s book Cathedrals of France are such good counsel for visiting a museum or a gallery or a cathedral. For life really, and any part of the day.
Read More
Admiring photos of artist Heather Chontos’ atelier in France, we stumbled on the backstory of resourcefulness and improvisation in response to fierce, Covid-fueled constraint.
Read More
In this lovely (refreshing) short film, Laura Owen Sanderson describes how she found healing from a dire illness through wild swimming. For her, the process was a kind of rewilding…
Read More
We’re inspired in so many ways by graffiti artist Banksy’s brilliant tutorial done to the words of Bob Ross, TV painting instructor and host of the iconic Joy of Painting show from 1983 to 1994. Along with revelatory technique is a philosophy for navigating life…
Read More
This quote from the great Lawrence Ferlinghetti, recently-departed poet and founder of San Francisco’s legendary City Light’s Bookstore, expresses an incredibly refreshing worldview…
Read More
After an extended pause from Improvised Life seeing my friend through open heart surgery, all is well. The surgery was successful, and my friend is slowly recovering. Through weeks of ICU and the unpredictable processes of healing, we have felt the powerful effect of the simplest of things: Kindness.
Read More
This week, my dearest friend will have open-heart surgery, a territory whose outcomes and demands defy prediction. So I will be taking time off from writing Improvised Life. But I will be carrying its lessons with me as I navigate waiting, hospital, ICU…
Read More
Periodically I revisit this short clip of Julia Child flipping a potato pancake, “a daring thing to do” on her ’70s television show where flubs and mess-ups were left as-is. Child ad libs essential wisdom that applies to any daring endeavor, and life itself.
Read More