As an addendum to yesterday’s post, here’s another call to silence: There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in […]
Wisdom
Inviting Silence
Once again Henri Nouwen has verbalized insights that resonate with me. I’ve never read any of the wise man’s books, but he keeps bobbing to the surface. My friend Nicole sent me quotes by him while she was completing her masters in theology. My favorite online wisdom guide, Whiskey River, has also provided some wonderful […]
A Call for the Imagination
Artist, writer, creativity coach and friend Nadine Boughton sent this message to several of us yesterday. Her insights touch into the delicate corner turning that happens every August. It is as if the seasons give us a gentle nudge since what is to come is inevitable and sublime, especially here in New England. Her photograph […]
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Go for Interesting
Howard Zinn Some of my favorite advice for living came through Howard Zinn by way of The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a collection of essays about and by people who did not give up even though the deck was stacked against them. To paraphrase the outspoken, truth-wielding Zinn, he says you have to […]
Shelter My Daydreams
If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the home, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. –Gaston Bachelard Whether a home or a studio, the calling to shelter daydreaming is a subtle and delicate vocation. A window in my […]
Leaning with Comfort on the Mysteries
As is often the case, random walks through Webspace can put you face to face with surprises and unexpected treasures. I happened upon an ad for Eakins Press, and it piqued my interest. In a blurb for one of Eakins Press’ books, The Bitch-Goddess Success, edited by Leslie George Katz, three memorable quotes appeared: …the […]
Wallace Shawn’s Pugnacious Wisdom
Wallace Shawn has been a figure of admiration for me ever since I saw My Dinner with Andre, a movie that exemplifies Robert Benchley’s claim that the world is divided into two groups—those that divide the world into two groups, and those that don’t. My experience is that anyone who knows the film either loves […]
Capacity for Delight
A section of my studio wall in South Boston The weight shifts measurably in a studio space after a large body of work goes out the door. Yes, the chaos of the last few months has cleared out, that’s true. But my experience this week was less a dust settling relief than a strong sense […]
Going In, Going Out
I’ve been in a deep relationship for months now with Lewis Hyde’s rich and fragrant book, Trickster Makes the World. Yes, fragrant. That’s how it feels to be enraptured by this amazing volume in all its lush, verdant and seductive power. While it can be approached with the traditional “start at the beginning and read […]
Leaky Margins
What Kafka had to be so clear and simple about was that nothing is clear and simple. On his death bed he said of a vase of flowers that they were like him: simultaneously alive and dead. All demarcations are shimmeringly blurred. Some powerful sets of opposites absolutely do not, as Heraclitus said, cooperate. They […]