I have had (if that's the right word) horses for about 20 years, finding them again post childhood when we lived in California. They became central to my world for over a decade, and then, after a serious fall and a move back east, a beloved bunch of pals who entertained one another more than [...]
The Return of Myth America A Mythic Radio Show I spent the better part of four years wandering into a delightfully dilapidated radio broadcast studio every Tuesday morning to talk about the intersections of myth, imagination, and the American psyche on an NPR affiliate community radio station. I loved every minute of it. But the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
A Herd of Words One of the wild ideas I'm working on is shaping a section of my doctoral dissertation. I wrote on frivolity, and the point of pointlessness (because, dissertation in mythology!). My dissertation was a wild idea itself, in many ways. I was both embracing and whacking away at the ideas of academic [...]
Friends Help Bring Wild Ideas to Life The Solitude of Our Imaginations We dream big, wild, wonderful ideas in the solitude of our own imaginations. (Most of the time, at least.) It's a pretty glorious thing to ride what philosopher Gaston Bachelard calls 'the voyage into the land of the infinite.' The seas can be [...]
"Je sais aussi, dit Candide, qu'il faut cultiver notre jardin." - Voltaire, Candide Cultivating My Own Garden Last week, I wrote about the power of getting to those pesky tasks that can bog us down fast, when we think of them, to get them out of the way. This week, because I am [...]
