Instead of going out of your way to seek the extraordinary, what if you could live in a more carefree way, just by subtly changing your regular, everyday life? —Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Sometimes I feel…
“The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us…
For six months I’ve gotten to read and learn and grow with a real sweet group of folks. Mark Chmiel is such a generous teacher, and the communities he builds, so loving and expansive. An…
This is the second time this year I am facilitating a course on this do-it-yourself theme, which comes from Allen Ginsberg, “You have to write your own history, nobody’s going to do it for you.“…
Grief you motherfucker, You robber of joy, You thief in the night, Stealing and killing. Burning my village to the ground. Grief, you backpack full of rocks, You unrelenting burden I bear Just when I…
“First We Read, Then We Write” –title of Robert D. Richardson’s study on Emerson’s creative life “Something that you feel will find its own form” –Jack Kerouac, U.S. novelist and poet “You have to write…
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. — Saint Augustine Why…
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I…
Imagine you are not alone. Consort with other writers. You are in a League of Writing. You are part of a conspiracy to lift the discourse and practice of writing higher. Think of your writing…
Appreciation is the sacrament. —Allen Ginsberg Another class is finished…the autumn one entitled “Facing the Future: Resources for a Rebirth of Wonder” “Rebirth of wonder” comes from lines in a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem— “I am…