Sparks to light your wild idea
Joy: Greeting an Uncertain Future
In the midst of global crapitude, my sister and my intrepid mother have together bought a house. My sister has lived on Cape Cod for over 35 years. She is a creative iconoclast in a place that has both celebrated its creative iconoclasts, and has failed to find a way to keep them supported as the chasm between who has money (and lots of it) and those who don’t has gotten deeper. Like many beautiful places where the rebellious and imaginative have gathered over the years, it can be hard to afford to live there. She has been increasingly worried that [...]
Life, Resurrection, and the Mythic Teachings of Frogs
In the Catskill Mountains of New York State, where I live, the return of spring is a distinct moment, at dusk on the night when the spring peepers erupt into song. If you’ve not had the pleasure of experiencing peepers, they are tiny little woodland frogs that spend much of their lives living on the forest floor. Every spring, on the first warm night, they wend their way across leaf mold and even snow to find the nearest pool of still water. And then they sing, with haunting shrill voices, loudly enough that if there are enough of them, you can [...]
Ask for a Glass of Water: When the World Is Scary
Ask for a glass of water... How to unfreeze when the world is scary around you. As the coronavirus upends how we all are living, and brings such uncertainty, fear for our loved ones and our livelihoods, our communities and our future, we're in one of the toughest moments most of us have experienced. An offering from a good friend, in this wild era: I was talking with my friend Chris a few days ago, and he told me something he learned when he was an EMT. In times of crisis, we can simply freeze in panic. Our minds and our [...]
Breathing Fire: Let Your Dragon Burn, Baby, Burn
Breathing Fire: Let Your Dragon Burn, Baby, Burn Most of us struggle with how powerful we might be. We spend a lot of time banking down flames, avoiding conflict, not wanting to hurt people's feelings, not being too much. We are afraid of breathing fire in the world. We want to be NICE. I do, at least. Do you? Ugh. Because, yeah, well, nice is, well, nice. And it's damning with faint praise, when you think about it... What Happens if You Let Go of Nice? And instead go for thinking about how you can light a fire of creativity and [...]
Breathe Deep and Resume the Quest
Breathe Deep and Resume the Quest Some days, the world flips upside down. And it can take a while to find your breath again. Last summer, the world lost my truly amazing dad. (This picture is of him learning to play the cello at almost 90. He was the great imaginer. You can learn more about him here, if you'd like.) As my family and I have been adapting to life without him nearby, I've been feeling pretty quiet. Working through what matters to me, realizing that the world immutably changes when you lose one of your most beloveds, and finding [...]
Taming a Wild Idea | A Pox Upon Perfection
Taming a Wild Idea, Step One One of the most challenging aspects to taming a wild idea is moving it from the ever-so-tasty place where you can love it from a distance to diving in to make it real. There's something truly delicious about allowing grand ideas to stay wild. They're always perfect when they live in the edges of our imaginations. They can dance there, sparkling and undulating, and we never have to worry about discovering that they have really bad breath. Or unclipped toenails. Or that they actually have the rhythm of a particularly ungraceful warthog. It is so [...]
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