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 [...]
Tag: self-development
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 [...]
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 [...]
Dressing Games
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 10/15/20 Something magical about the moments between wakefulness and sleep. A time of vivid, free-floating images, words, phrases. I get some of my best creative ideas then—just before drifting off to sleep or upon waking. Rollo May talks about this phenomenon in The Courage to [...]
On Low Living
It occurred to me about two or three weeks ago that I was, perhaps, in need of a change in habits. Spurred by feelings of stress, overstimulation, and an overwhelming desire to tune out— to reclaim a firmer sense of autonomy and personal well-being during such chaotic times, a yearning for a simpler, quieter, lower [...]
On Being a Master of None
Can you believe The Used Life celebrated her third anniversary on April 27? Neither can I.... When I started this blog three years ago, I felt instinctively (and immediately, as I recall) that the tagline, Experiments in the Art of Mastering None, captured the essence of my project. Indeed, I first conceived of The Used [...]
