Voyager We’ve packed our bags, we’re set to fly no one knows where, the maps won’t do. We’re crossing the ocean’s nihilistic blue with an unborn infant’s opal eye. It has the clarity of earth and sky seen from a spacecraft, once removed, as through an amniotic lens, that groove- lessness of space, the last […]
Poetry
Longing, And Adieu
“In Kyoto …” In Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo, I long for Kyoto. –Bashō Translated by Jane Hirshfield This wonderful short poem feels like an appropriate adieu to 2010. The collage above is by Susana Jacobson and dates from our days of sharing a loft on the Lower East Side, on Henry Street at Rutgers, so […]
The Books, Now and Always
And Yet the Books And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, Tribes on the march, planets in motion. “We are, ” […]
Gills are Given
Together The water closing over us and the going down is all. Gills are given. We convert in a town of broken hulls and green doubloons. O you dead pirates hear us! There is no salvage. All you know is the color of warm caramel. All is salt. See how our eyes have migrated to […]
Accounting for Happiness
My friend and fellow blogger Sally Reed (and the writer behind Butter and Lightning) recently posted a very moving message about grief, suffering and loss. I hope you will take a moment to visit her site and read it in its entirety. In her most recent post she included an exquisite poem by Jane Kenyon […]
Mostly Standing Still
Agnes Martin Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. –Mary Oliver This came to me by way of Jill Fineberg, author of People I Sleep With. It captures the essence IMHO. […]
Everything is Continuous
A skin drum, hand made in Morocco and an artifact of extraordinary presence, was lent to me by my friend John Wyrick and now hangs on my studio wall. Exercise First, forget what time it is for an hour. Do it regularly every day. Then forget what day of the week it is, and do […]
Openings
The universe in a blade of grass (…or in a lid left on your work table in the angled light of afternoon) Here’s more on the theme of looking for and relishing the unexpected, life’s little and big exceptions, those “black swans” that appear out of nowhere (as I wrote about here.) I am also […]
- Philosophy
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Tinker Away
It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain […]
Some Days That’s All You’ve Got
Ad for L. L. Bean, back in the day (1941) Photo: George Strock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and […]