Hummingbirds live at the limits of what is possible. I am reminded of a quote by David Attenborough, a documentary on hummingbirds and, for reasons I don’t yet understand, Rollo May’s The Meaning of Anxiety, which I first read about three years ago. It’s late on the Sunday morning after my birthday. I’m doing yoga [...]
Category: personal growth and spirituality
A Life Worth Living
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.A. H. Maslow Would you like to a know an interesting—or, at the very least, a rather eccentric—fact about me? I wake [...]
On Gratitude
It seems popular these days to speak of gratitude as an almost magical inner experience. As if feeling thankful is, quite literally, some sort of magnet, a means of attracting the good life and all it affords. That is, love, abundance, freedom, and general life satisfaction. I emphatically disagree with this viewpoint. Of course, I’ve [...]
Of Sacred Seasons
This is time of year, my creativity seems to transform. Becomes almost corporeal—that is, more hands-on, more nurturing, more intensely connected to the rhythms of nature. Instead of spending my days in the writing room tinkering with poetry or experiments in collage, I find myself outdoors tending to the garden, to the wildlife that lives [...]
On the Art of Responsibility
Why not make a daily pleasure out of a daily necessity? Peter Mayle There are a number of reasons why I love reading Peter Mayle’s narratives of life in Provence. None the least of which is the culinary adventure that invariably takes center stage in every story. Three-hour lunches over bottles of rosé, assorted goat’s [...]
What Lives in My Backyard
Tufted Titmouse (with a snack) It was a revelation for me to discover that both my gardening and new-found birdwatching hobbies had affected a kind of internal transformation. It is now my belief that the wild creatures—you might call them the “least” among us—show us who we are. That, at the end of the day, [...]
The Pretender
The Pretender, paper collage, 2021 This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 5/25/21 I awake this morning reminded of Alan Watts. My mind’s been unsettled since I published Butterfly Effect. Agitated in the way one often is when on the verge of completing a very important thought. The world inside is the [...]
Butterfly Effect
Butterfly Effect, paper collage, 2021 This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 5/22/21 I buried a dead butterfly yesterday. I’d picked her up along the side of the road when I was out walking the night before. She could no longer fly, and I knew death was probably imminent. So I scooped [...]
So, you think you can fly.
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 3/16/21 Went for a walk last night and found a hawk feather. (A little gift from nature. If I’ve identified it correctly, from a Cooper's hawk.) I love walking. Of the many kinds of exercise I enjoy, walking is tied, perhaps most intimately, to my [...]
The Miraculous in Everyday Life
Over the Hills, paper collage, 2020 I dedicated my last post to defining what it means to perceive the world as miraculous. It is a style of experiencing, or way of seeing, that is central to my belief that life is a miracle (as opposed to, say, “life is love,” “the world is dangerous,” or [...]
