 Stranger than FictionDo you ever feel as though your life is being narrated? Or as though you may want to turn to Dustin Hoffman for metaphysical advice? Then this little gem of a movie is one of your new best friends. The luminous beings that appear in this movie are: Will Farrell, ... On Grocery StoresTo me, the true test of an excellent grocery store is this: if you walked in smiling (and I hope you were), were you smiling when you came out? If you’re all frustrated when you come out then conjure up a lovely grocery store to go to. It will very likely ... The RoadThere is something about a road trip, with its vast changing panoramas of field, sky, city, flowers, truck wheels, with its swooping birds and deep possibilities, that lets me hold life a little looser, more delicately, giving it room to breathe.![Kenny in that Grand Canyon [video]](http://www.thebeautythatiseverywhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Kenny-grand-canyon-singing-150x150.jpg) Kenny in that Grand Canyon [video]Here is a video of Kenny Crowley, beauty-walker, singer-songwriter, son of mine, singing his anthem to the Grand Canyon and to all of earth. Last summer he retrofitted his pickup truck so it would be a camper/home on wheels and did a big loop during July and August. He left ... What happens if the power goes out?Just pose the question to yourself, whether or not there's an impending weather event. What happens? Have you got excellent flashlights, fondue pots, Viewmaster sets and drawers full of good candles? Gallons of clean water, Sterno, batteries? It’s a comforting thing to have provisions. But still more comforting to know ... PurpleOh my goodness I am so in love with the lady in the truckstop where I just went in for ice and beef jerky. She has purple eyeshadow and pink lipstick and dark moviestar hair, staring off into the desert when I opened the glass door. This is going in the ... Take Polaroids of Your TV ScreenTake Polaroids of your tv screen while Lucas dances, black eyes, black hair, black turtleneck, lanky Lucas, while he dances, no tripod, no vertical hold, no pause, just you leaning sweet into Lucas. Make 1,000 copies on photo glossy, staple gun each glossy to a telephone pole every mile from ... Believe meSome friends of mine started a writing group around the beginning of the last decade, and this is how I first met them. I am so deeply grateful that I did, as they are the loveliest people and writers: Leah, and Nathan, and Melanie. And RaasaLeela, who was in ... ChoicesI am at Silver Diner for the first time, having a delightful Saturday morning. I've helped my Dad shovel two truckloads of mulch and, after my Belgian waffles, Amish eggs and nitrate-free bacon, I am going over to lounge around with my beautiful sister and talk of anything/everything. A lovely young ... Ordinary LifeA quote from Jan Frazier, "When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening" --What do I want for myself? I want to learn how to pare from my consciousness all that is not gratitude. I want to cease praying for anything I do not already have, but pray ... GoodwaterKenny told me once when he was little that he'd been drinking godwater from flowers. Goodwater/Godwater. Same/same. The Kool-Aid Wino, and other storiesThese short stories are continually luminous to me, and when I read them -- or when I breathed them in and out later, after they'd become a part of me -- I was so pleased to be in a world where they had appeared. They warm up the place considerably. The ... Everyday Adventures in Beingness: Some IdeasHere are some things that might be fun. Or might not. You decide. Research memory. Or Joseph Campbell. Or the workings of the brain. Or the Shakers, or Diane Arbus, or Walker Evans. Wallpaper the bathroom with Bazooka bubblegum comics. Plan a weird ass party. Make yourself some paper mache birds and let them ... SoapI wash my glass in Palmolive dish soap in the kitchen at work and it very sweetly catapults me back 28 years to where my babies are babies and I am washing dishes very sweetly in the kitchen in upstate New York. Any moment one of them might come around ... Climbing the TorIt is early, early in the morning. It doesn't feel like it's late at night. I woke at 2 a.m. and I love that sometimes. The stillness. The poetry of middle of the night thoughts. Would I love it as much if every night some wakefulness awakened me, and my ... Where is it, this true home of yours?Your true home is where you live in your heart. The place where you are connected to love and the way it moves through the world, permeating everything, beaming out from toll booth ladies, impatient clerks, flat tires, cows mooing, people who interrupt you, redwood trees, sun setting on the ... World Exploded Into Love All Around MeAnd now, I sit, with my hand on my heart, full of love for Bob Dylan, that wondrous, mighty seer who has decided the time has come for the story of the Titanic TO BE SUNG. Christomighty, and amen, brother. You are, for sure, the fiddler I want fiddling whilst ... StoriesI have things to tell you, you know. It won't take long. Or it may take a hundred years. And I will be listening, because you have things to say, too. We have stories to put together like bubbles, bumping lazily into each other, fusing, popping, suddenly boundaryless, suddenly all ... Let the Mystery Be - Iris Dement (VIDEO)I could listen to this forever. "Everybody is wondering what and where they all came from. Everybody's worrying where they're going to go when the whole thing's done. No one knows for certain, so if it's all the same to me, I think I'll just let the mystery be." The Mother of LanguageI was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful ... Little PortalsSometimes I want to give you everything. Yes, you, reading this now. I sit in the morning darkened by the rain, listening to the tea pot work up to a whistle, making precise Morse code clicks on my iPad keyboard as I type this. I have just read this morning's ... Collect storiesWhen someone speaks to you, let everything slow down, and listen very closely. This is how you will get a glimpse of someone's true spirit, and maybe share a little of yours with them. You can practice this at first with people you already really like, and then as you ... A Chromatic Typewriter: For Re-Writing HistoryMore loveliness from Making it Lovely. This is a conceptual art piece by Tyree Callahan. So dreamy. Image compilation by Making It Lovely. Art and Image by Tyree Callahan. Treat. Yo. Self.You know I have a Parks & Rec obsession, right? (It's my Pleasantville.) Anyway, here is one of the many, many reasons why: Being GratefulI've started to notice that there is something about being grateful that seems to change my way of being in the world. And it seems to me to be another aspect of this notion of having a choice. I can find something or someone to be grateful for. Even if it's ... Loving KindnessSend love into your body -- your heart, your cheekbones, your belly. Know that you are love in human form. Beam out love to everyone you have ever met. This kind of love you will beam needs nothing back; it needs nothing more than to make its way from your heart ... Radio silence (Sedona/beauty/road trip)Here is a post from a few days ago I thought I had published... "Heading toward Sedona now. Just saw an elk jerky roadside stand. The sign said "really good." I believe them...." You will note the radio silence since just before entering Sedona. Meet me there, all my beloveds reading ... Heck yeah, CaitlinI see I have some catching up to do. I'm only halfway through Caitlin Moran's "How to Be a Woman," which is HILarious and brilliant, and LITERALLY made me want to stand up on the chair at Elwood Thompson's one fine morning and shout out "I AM A FEMINIST!" just ... Tap hereTap here to begin writing, someone whispered, and she realized it had already begun. It had started somewhere after her telephone call with a friend from her early life, from when she was some inconsequential, flimsy thing unrecognizable to her now and it had fluttered, birdlike, when she began her ... Magic Wands are RegularI love moving my car to a new spot every two hours. Because it means a small adventure, regularly scheduled. What will it be? Today it is a trip to the yoga studio to check it out and pick up a schedule, a little pink card I can hold in ... Yesterday On the RiverMy darling son Kenny was in town this weekend and we went to the James River, by way of what's known in these parts as Texas Beach. You depart ordinary reality slowly, via a path from a park near Maymont which seems initially rather, well, ordinary. This is, ... LatelyFor many years, whenever I've sat down and asked myself something along the lines of: "What does your divine right life look like?", something in me would flash back a vision of gorgeous walls of jars. Jars filled with beautiful food and lots and lots of dried herbs. Lovely colors. ... IllinoisThis was a very different sunrise over corn. First it started flashing me its color behind the St. Louis arch. Then over the Missouri River and into Illinois where the colors of the sun spreading across the enormous sky and the fields and the road were all I wanted in the ... Diners Are PortalsLaundromats are portals, too. You know what I mean. You walk in, the color is different. The people have appeared there for each other, converged on the place to do ordinary things with great beauty, like drink coffee softly from a heavy mug or lift the lid to the Speed ... Angels in plain sightImagine that everywhere you go, there are angels in plain sight. Your waiter, for example. Here is what happened to me one day several years back when I sat in one of my favorite coffee shops, writing, brainstorming, considering what my next move in life would be. I looked up from ... Camper DreamIn the dream last night, the tri-level where I once lived was collapsing, much like -- you know -- the memories give way in the film "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." At the ceiling on the ground level, you could see the floor above beginning to disintegrate, and ... It was always about the danceYou know that, don't you, Scott Hastings? Maybe the Ballroom Dancing Federation doesn't have any new moves. And you're bored with the old ones. Aren't you, Scott? Wouldn't you rather dance your own dance now? Wherever your feet want to go? Wyoming, furtherThe land flattens out, stretches further. Yarrow grows at the roadside. Treeless, here where you'd have to go so deep for water. Scattered cattle ranches, the continental divide. Ethereal, butter-colored place. What if?What if no job or house or car or ideal weight or ideal husband is what is going to make you shine? What if there’s a bucket of magic in your secret heart and everything you witness stands transfixed, watching you, awaiting that moment when you smile and start flinging that sparkle everywhere. What if everything simply ... Dance is a very powerful drug"Dance is a very powerful drug, Mr. Keane. If embraced judiciously, it can exorcise demons, access deep seated emotions and color your life in joyous shades of brilliant magenta that you never knew existed. But, one must shoulder its challenges with intrepid countenance if one is ever to reap its ... The sinking of a shipI love when I wake up in the morning with finger waves in my hair, as though I've been to a night salon, where my straight hair has been pampered and has run wild into curls. I love when my Titanic of a story has hit its iceburg. And it has. ... Airstreams are beautifulThey just seem to match out here, something glimmering back the color of everything as it drives through, just a little more saturated, just a little more certain of its light. Being Tree-likeYou may not seem to be doing anything much in the way of production, like clocking work hours or acquiring goods, or writing Pulitzer Prize winning books. Imagine, though, that there are qualities in you that are very tree-like. You stand with roots deep in the ground, soaking up water, ... |
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Pure genius and love in action. boyanslat.com
So this morning I woke, and got out all the jars of herbs that have been patiently waiting for me, and started blending an enormous batch of Richmondy Momma Love Tea. And the beauty that was everywhere! The colors, my hands communing with the herbs, filling my heart with light. Kenny said he has been brewing the tea in the french press, and he is able to extract several pots full from each brew. As I think (and hope) that said french press must be the one I left there when I headed back east, I am going to go hunt down another french press today and get brewing. And listen to this. Dana has brewed up some kombucha and mixed it with some Momma Love Tea and added oranges to it, and Kenny said it is seriously the most amazing concoction ever. So, perhaps time to start another kombucha mother and get back to that, too.
Here is what goes in Momma Love Tea: Xoxoxo P.S. I also made a batch of a cleansing and strengthening tea using some things from the garden and some dried herbs I got from Elwood Thompson’s, which is a healthy grocery store here. The herbs from the store, lovely as they are, do not have nearly as much chi as they have probably been sitting around a while. I will have to get seeds to grow this stuff my own self. (we are just now beginning to plan the garden, OMG.). Here is what’s in it:  Photograph by http://www.derekolsonphotography.com/ Patty Griffin’s singing me up to the mountain as I head to Asheville for the holy days. Ahhhh, beauty. I am beaming you love from the deepest part of my heart. Merry everything and everywhere. Xoxo Well, this is pretty cool. Plants that clean up the air for you by eliminating formaldehyde and other noxious fumes. Let me just add peace lily and pot mum to the list today.
Lovely Northern Exposure.
Image of me by Kenny Crowley, taken at Big Sur last year. We didn’t bring any cameras to the river this time. Just ourselves. My dear and lovely friend Leah Lamb has launched My-Planet.org, and with it brings to life her dream of connecting people with our amazing planet — and those who share it with us — through stories. Let’s join with her and start to tell beautiful stories of each other, of our oceans, our trees, our home. There’s enough awfulness pouring out of the television set to dash our hopes if we let it. If we focus on that. Let’s not. Instead, let’s change the story. Let’s get outside. Let’s smell what trees smell like. Let’s dream a new dream. You, me and Leah.
Image by Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow |
    
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