 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 ... 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. 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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. EverythingIn that Leonard Cohen film I posted last time, LC talks of being interested in going through his days in a state of grace. And if he is not in a state of grace, he goes back to bed. That he says this in response to a question from a ... 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. 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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. Love Beams BackSomehow, I would pour the colors of this room where I sit, of the birds that sing outside my window, of the knockout pink roses which have begun to multiply in bloom, into this liquid page where I write. This page which goes to you, which beams all I would ... 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 ... 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 ... 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: 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... Oxygen"Breathe," someone said to me yesterday. Good idea. #survivaltactic. How is it I had forgotten about breathing? Taking in oxygen. Even when I have worked fourteen straight days and am doing little beyond working very hard, eating and sleeping. Or especially then. I can still breathe in and out. I can still ... 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 ... 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 ... 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 ... SunsetSunset Boulevard to the water, then up the coast to Santa Barbara as the sun moves spectacularly from our sight. Image by Corie Crowley, Coriedoesmyhair.com. 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. ... 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 ... Station WagonsJust came across this gorgeous post called "Station Wagon Living" on English Muse. Makes me real happy. Here's a photo of my little sister sitting in front of one of the many station wagons of our childhoods. We would, like every American family, load them up in the summer with coolers ... 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 ... 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 ... RoadI am on a road trip to the mountains, feeling completely dogless. Where the hell is Eli Crowley. The car is packed with gear and coolers, heading west. He is supposed to be in the back, wind fluttering his feathers, meeting my eyes in the rear view, lighting up every ... 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 ... BubblesIn the writing group last night, we wrote. I kept turning on the porch light, walking out to meet the things that would be written, but I just saw them glimmering off in the backstreets, holding still when I paused to listen. They are on their way to dance parties, to ... 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, ... 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, ... GoodwaterKenny told me once when he was little that he'd been drinking godwater from flowers. Goodwater/Godwater. Same/same. 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, ... 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 ... 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. ... 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 ... 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 ... |
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Darjeeling Limited
So, a fellow Parks and Recreation devotee blogger posted this photo montage to Tumblr — doesn’t this just make you want to go to there? I remember when Kenny and I went to see Darjeeling at the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, we floated out of the theatre and immediately headed after the soundtrack. One song in particular: Where Do You Go To, My Lovely? |
    
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