Writing and Driving and Life E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” This passage from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird came to mind while driving with my 15 year old last night. We were talking about growing … Continue reading Like Driving a Car at Night
And it dawns on me. The lesson. These things happen sometimes when something someone says intrigues me so, that I want to ponder it, mull it over, hold it in my hand and carry it like a talisman until its wisdom breaks open for me. Continue reading In the Silence
It’s Tao Tuesday – a fun little reminder to think these thoughts, to examine these principles, to engage the spirit and delve into this understanding, or non-understanding as the case may be. One day of the week, as originally instigated by Amy Putkonen over at Tao te Ching Daily. She has a whole list of every chapter and articles or responses to every one. I … Continue reading Thoughts on Thinking, the Empty Mind and Not-Doing
This is not a reference I throw around lightly. This is something I have studied. I worked at the Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco when I was younger, helping maintain their library of groups they watched for hate crimes or atrocities in the making. Every day, researchers would hand me stacks of articles from periodicals around the world to chronicle and file. They kept records … Continue reading Horrifying Comparison of Adolescence
Reflections on The Tao te Ching – Chapter 1: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet … Continue reading Darkness within Darkness
“You know how sometimes you have a fight with me in your head, and I don’t know anything about it,” my husband asked me this morning. “What if that’s what you have going with ‘The Church’ – what if you are mad at them, but they aren’t even in it, and they’re not mad at you at all?” Yesterday, I wrote a passionate poem and shared it … Continue reading Maybe I was Never a Heathen After All
My father told me when I was young that “Thoughts untangle themselves when they cross our lips or pencil tips.” We develop as humans when we discuss ideas with others, or when we wrestle them out on paper. When we are in dialogue – either with others or internally – we learn and grow and broaden our minds and infuse our spirit with the sparks of … Continue reading The Sustenance of the Psyche
Sometimes it hits me, how beautiful life is right now. My husband and I watched the Season Finale, the Epic Finale, of The Office tonight. We have watched this show our entire married life. When the Writer’s Strike interrupted production, we went back to old DVDs of previous seasons, and even checked out the British version on the BBC. We could not understand a … Continue reading Dwell in the Glory Days
The Corn is in the ground and so are the Broccoli plants. Let’s see. Yesterday we got in the tomatoes, onions, carrots, kale, jalapeno, lemon cucumbers, and watermelons. Even with knee-pads and gloves for gardening, my knees are aching, and my hands are caked with dirt and soil amendments. Bean played in what will eventually be one of the duck ponds, and pretended to fish. We … Continue reading Here’s to Gardening Imperfections, and Joy in General Messiness!
I started to say that whenever we have a day where I feel like I’ve given my absolute best, I’ve poured everything I have into this mothering gig, and really done a bang up job, that’s when my kids act out and get crazy and I end up becoming unravelled by bedtime… I started to say that, and then this story popped into my … Continue reading Constantly Knocking Over the Teacups
It was a Poet-Philosopher’s Dream – to watch Life of Pi tonight with my family. To watch the beautiful interpretation of delving into oneself to learn about the great unknowns, the enormous out there, the big questions, the tiger, the vegetarian, the sea and the sky and the storm and the quiet. Oh, such a tremendous movie. Such a story. Such an achievement. A poet … Continue reading Such a Golden, Ruffled Dreamworld; Such a Blue, Blue Sea!
Words and phrases fascinate me. A stunning turn of phrase can take my breath away. I am a bit of a mystic and philosophy and poetry move me. The first author I completely fell for was Madeline L’Engle, in her book, “The Small Rain.” Her way with words was an other-worldly experience for me. It was as if she was putting my own thoughts onto … Continue reading — Submarine, Pogo Stick —
Suddenly, I’m not tired anymore. My last day at my job was a week and a half ago and I’ve been sick, and voiceless ever since my first day home. That was not the entrance into this new life of working from home that I was expecting. But it was a transition period. I needed some sleep. Tonight, we watched, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, with … Continue reading “Your Life is an Occasion: Rise to It!”
For starters, this was supposed to be finished yesterday, when it was still Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday. It is a whole lot of thoughts mulling around about being an artist, and what it means to feed that. The other morning, on my first morning of not getting ready for work in an office, I found myself sitting and staring out the window at the front … Continue reading Sitting and Staring, and Starry Starry Night
Whatever you may believe about the formations of crop circles, whether they are made by pranksters or by some other means; to put any time into studying them, proves they are not easy to dismiss as silliness. In the book, Sacred Geometry, by Stephen Skinner, the author shares that most crop circles are based entirely on Euclidean geometry. A quick Google search of the phrase crop … Continue reading Bird’s Eye View, Crop Circles and What Aliens Must Think of Us
This may or may not circle around to making any sense. It is the middle of the night, I am finally not exhausted, and I am feeling philosophical. Ben said an interesting thing yesterday about buses being so heavy that he worried about the earth’s ability to stay in orbit during certain times of the day when there are buses everywhere. He was worried about us … Continue reading The Gravitational Pull of Home and Hearth and Ideas
This morning, I started out my reading time with a little poetry from Billy Collins. The title of this article is a line from his poem Canada, from the book, “Sailing Alone Around the Room.” What Collins does best is turn an apparently simple phrase into a numinous moment. –The New Yorker That started off innocently. I just wanted to share the quote on the … Continue reading Endless Visibility that Hands you the Horizon on a Platter
Yesterday, I tuned into the radio just in time to hear the announcer say the title of the previous song, “Pot. Kettle. Black,” and it stuck with me the rest of the day. The old saying wound itself through my thoughts all afternoon. The point it kept making in my head was that there is never afforded us a better avenue of self-reflection and growth … Continue reading Pot. Kettle. Black.
