My posts are personal reflections on being mindful, inspired and curious.
It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife’s eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this house? Curtains hang heavily from their rods.
Rules for Happiness Something to do. Someone to love. Something to hope for. Immanuel Kant What is it that we can’t make, make it stay when it arrives, or make it return once it has passed? Happiness. For us to live with things we like is easy. But to live surrounded by things we don’t,
I stood in the Provençal light my eyes hungry, the landscape beautiful. I couldn’t get enough of the dappled sunshine to quench my thirst. I’d seen a lot of bowed heads over cell phones instead of the fragrant roses blooming nearby. After Nazim Hikmet Aigues-Mortes Apt Goult Gordes St. Remy de Provence Caromb Uzès Bonnieux Carpentras Venasque
Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out someone has
“Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.” Douglas Adams We all have experiences that transcend reality, like the feeling we get when we listen to deeply arousing and poetic cello music. We recognize
The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student replied, “It is.” The Buddha then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then explained, “In life, we cannot always
“For one person to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks.” Rilke Over the weekend I was feeling unmotivated and uninspired after a burst of writing several magazine articles and working on my memoir about moving to France. I had come to a difficult chapter and felt completely stuck. The Buddha said
“It is no more possible to live in the future, than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.” Wendell Berry We were invited to a birthday party for our neighbor, Jeanette Ducourneau, who was born on December 31, 1937. A group of fifty friends and family members
“On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs; By time snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
