Category: musings
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From Rebecca Solnit’s essay called “Woolfe’s Darkness, Embracing the Inexplicable” found in her book, Men Explain Things to Me. “Feeling emotional upheaval is not a spiritual faux pas; it’s the place where the warrior learns compassion.” –Pema Chödrön, From The Places That Scare You “When it is dark enough, you can see the…
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Wednesday night is writing circle night for me. I write with some amazing, inspiring women, and look forward to it all week. In tonight’s fastwrite, we were invited to take a line from the poem, “Hunger” by Gunilla Norris, and write for 12 minutes to see where the line might lead us. The title is…
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This morning while reading and reflecting, I came across a favorite Lucille Clifton poem: i am running into a new year i am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that i catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be…
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I lie on my belly on the asphalt sidewalk. It feels cold, even through my down jacket, but the pond has frozen overnight into such beautiful swirls and filigrees of ice, and the morning sun is skimming the frosty patterns in…
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It is the last day of Autumn, a cold, thick-oatmeal gray day, and finally: I put on my rubber boots, and I’m raking leaves. It’s the first time since mid-October that the sleeping leaves have been disturbed, and I quickly realize it’s a bigger job than I thought it would be. I live on a…
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I don’t know how I stayed away from the water so long. A (very) minor surgery interrupted my habit of swimming 50 or so laps in an indoor pool, a half-hour meditation for me, where I immerse myself, literally, in a flow of stroking, kicking, turning, pushing off, all the while counting out the laps…
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September 23, 2014 / Haiku exercise Haiku #1 River curves away Blue sky sweeps above, cloudless iphone memory I am trying not to feel like I have to pin beauty down, like a butterfly to a board. But I can’t seem to stop. Another haiku? Haiku #2 Captured river, caught Pinned down, like a butterfly…
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Yesterday morning at seven-thirty, I went for a walk. The sun was streaming down Evanswood, turning the street into a golden river of light. Across that river, in the neighbor’s front yard, a trio of deer placidly munched hostas, unbothered by the dog walkers and the pack of school children milling at the…
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If you’re from the Midwest, it’s hard to imagine the colors at Ghost Ranch. Even if you’ve seen Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings and dozens of beautiful photographs. My Ohio home, lush as it is, looks faded in comparison, dully monochromatic. I feel like I’ve been colorblind until now, and am suddenly cured. New Mexico is red-orange…
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Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? –Edgar Allen Poe In 1849, Poe wrote, “It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” Dreams, in other words, could be viewed as endless…
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