the beauty that is everywhere

my love notes to the world

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Overhearing
A child, walking by my window: "Mmmm, nice little wind, wind!"
Take Polaroids of Your TV Screen
Take 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 here to New York City. Arrive breathless. You may quibble, saying who is this Lucas, I don't know him? I'll say does it really matter, you ...
Ode to My Friend Kathryn (Speaking of Fun)
Here is a note that my dear friend and fellow surreal poetess Kathryn sent me this week: LJC! I had a dream last night that you were getting married. You were moving out of one dwelling and into another, and I was helping you, but I didn’t realize you were getting married. Should I buy a dress? I wrote her back: Buy the dress. We will find the guy to match the dream. Kathryn is the kind of friend who not ...
Yesterday On the River
My 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 ordinary. This is, as I'm sure you know, often true of portals. You walk down a dirt path, cross over the railroad tracks via a weirdly God-awful footbridge and set of ...
In the garden
Radish harvest morning. Also bunny spotting. Also gloriously beautiful. Also camera batteries passing out. Also astonishing growth from the plants in the recent night rain. Also a voice in me that says: receive. Breathe in. Receive. There is nothing to get, even as I ricochet, even as I list-make, even as I figure out, forage. There are bunnies, radishes, flowers. There is a woman in a robe drinking coffee, going back in the house for fresh cameras. ...
Sprouts
There's a garden that grows in the backyard, sprouts coming up from seeds. Every morning, more loveliness. I wake, and walk out into the yard to see what the night rain has brought me. There are radishes and onion and beets and carrots and edamame and cukes and squash and zucchini and peas that have grown from seed, first delightful little sprouts, then plants that take their place in the garden bed. Also, in the way ...
Stories
I 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 the stories ever told. And we will keep telling. Because we are sayers. And seers. And smellers. And breathers. We shop at Price Club. We grow ...
Choices
I 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 father walks by, carrying his two year old blonde son from the table. The boy is crying in a rather overwhelmed sort of way and ...
Soap
I 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 the corner, all filled up with light, and the business of toys, and being-ness, and I will pick them up with my soap bubble hands, ...
Loving Kindness
Send 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 out into the world.
Sound Healing - Crystal Singing Bowls
This is quite an amazing album of sound recordings by Jonathan Goldman, sound healer, using luminous Crystal Tones singing bowls. I promise this will change the very nature of your day when you listen. Leave it playing on repeat and see if you suddenly realize you are in theta state.
Animal, you, animal, me
These images by Gregory Colbert in his exhibit, Ashes and Snow, make me feel completely weepy. Just go look. Feel all the peace pouring from the animals, from the you and the me? This is what we're meant for, my dear ones. This is where we're going. Right...about...now. Image by Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow
My Planet: Healing with Whales and Other Stories
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 ...
Being Tree-like
You 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, soaking up earth energy, with your branches spread out and taking in light. You are producing oxygen that others need in order to take in ...
Little Miss Sunshine
I just had my Little Miss Sunshine moment with some lovely adobe colored overpasses in Albuquerque. My camera was busy playing the perfect song (Bob Dylan and the Band singing "Too Much of Nothing") so I didn't try to take a picture with it too.
How to clear your space energetically
I use lots of tools for clearing my space and my body energetically, just depending on what feels right at the time. Here are some of them: Lemons. Another healer taught me to cut up a couple of lemons and add them to the bath to immediately clear my energetic field of any energies that are no longer serving my highest good. I also drink a lot of water with lemons in it. Dried white sage smudge sticks. ...
Sunset
Sunset 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.
Being Grateful
I'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 just a regular everyday thing, like breakfast. I can think or say to myself: "I'm so grateful for this delicious breakfast." And of course, I ...
On Grocery Stores
To 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 have the following: an enormous produce section. with lots of pretty colors. wax bags iron-on patchettes (assorted) bottle brushes Rit dye shoe laces (variety) Duraflame Long Stem Matches (ideal for lighting birthday ...
Purple
Oh 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 movie.
Breathing
You know about breathing. Breathing in and out. So what I am saying to you is breathe in air. Let that be one of the things you do, and build cities around it, countries. Breathe in Boise, Idaho, the church in London, the flowers from your father’s birthday, your daughter’s first laugh. Breathe in a tree somewhere, birds, a circle of rabbits moving through the yard. Then breathe out. Add your own air to the world.
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 water as you sit outside and breathe it in.
Link Love: Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated (VIDEO)
Posted by BrainPickings.com, "Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated in Stop-Motion" Just lovely. Be sure and vote for Marija and Ben in the RSA competition which ends 3/2/12: "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan - RSA/Nominet Trust competition from Marija Jacimovic on Vimeo. And here is the book, just in case you haven't seen it. You can read it through in around 45 minutes and when you are done, the way you look at food is completely altered. ...
Random beauty, courtesy of 60s era glam
My daughter and I are both obsessed with these lifeguard perches on the beach in Marin. She is lucky: she is just a short drive from them. As I'm on the other coast, my drive is a few thousand miles more. But that's okay - I like the drive.
Being Happy and Being Inspired Makes Happy Inspired Art
My dear friend and amazing human being Liz Sheehan is the director of Partners in the Arts, a program that supports arts integration at local schools here in RVA. We know, of course, that art feeds our soul. Our spirits. And kids know this already and way better than we do, but sometimes we just math them and english them to distraction so the part that they know at a deep level -- the language ...
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 this, in the beauty.
Fun with DIY: Make Lanterns Using Your Fave Photos
Oh, my goodness, the possibilities are endless with these DIY lanterns. The photos or illustrations could be of anything, yes? Here's the how-to link: DIY House Lanterns Fellow Fellow | Apartment Therapy.
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 waits for the love of you? What if there are places in you waiting for you to love them. To love them anyway. And if you ...
Corie Does My Hair
Every day, fresh wonder from Corie. I'm just loving #moviehairoftheweek, which I find hilarious and satisfying, all at the same time. And I don't think it's just because I'm her mother. www.coriedoesmyhair.com
How about awesome?
Awesome people hanging out together: an awesome Tumblr blog. This will cheer you up if you need cheering. Which I do. Image of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Sting by http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/

One Way Station at the Boom Boom Room! August 16th

One Way Station is playing Tuesday, August 16th at the Boom Boom Room!! 8:30 p.m. – 2 a.m. My son Kenny Crowley is the gorgeous crooner. Here’s the band’s website: One Way Station.

Come on out and dance.

In Living Landscapes: A mobile storytelling event

This past Thursday night I was lucky enough to be one of 30 people riding around San Francisco on a biodiesel bus. At each of the four locations where we stopped, we were regaled with beautiful stories and entertained by a talented troubadour. I can’t tell you what it means to stand outside the Women’s Center listening to an amazing woman tell her coming of age stories, or to stand by the ocean with a group of people huddling close to stay warm, and hearing stories of sea turtles and polar bears, or to tour through the Mission with a man that is himself one of its wonderful stories, and to stand there while neighbors come to their windows to listen to the song being played just for us, just for the night. You will have to join in next time! In Living Landscapes

The storytellers: Allison Davis: her coming of age stories; Wallace J. Nichols: sea turtle stories; Leah Lamb: polar bear story; Joe Lambert: stories of the Mission; Gary Rosenburg: the troubadour.

Here’s my tribute to the storytellers, the troubadour, and to everyone on the bus, with a special shout out to Leah Lamb, who made it all happen:

We walked in the dark by the edge of the sea, our path lit by tiny flashlights, up along the cliffs, skirting the edges: one stray step and we would have floated along on the air that hugs the cliffs and kept going. We were humbled by the night, by the clear presence of love, by the stories calling out to us on our way to hear more stories. The ocean thundered, rumbled, clapped its hands, and we counted our steps with prayer beads, keeping time with the surf. We had emerged from the bus, you see, where people whispered into the microphone where they’d come from, who they’d been, and we’d sipped tequila and toasted sea turtles and our love for the world with champagne. Later, in the pictures, you could see the color wrapping around us, bubbling up from us, doing what color does.

All photos courtesy of People and the Planet and In Living Landscapes.

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Quantum Physics and the fundamental unity of life
When science bears witness to love. When Russell Brand narrates our…
Breathing
You know about breathing. Breathing in and out. So what I am saying to…
Loving Kindness
Send love into your body -- your heart, your cheekbones, your belly. Know…

Clean: The Beginning of a Four-Week Detox
This week, I've started a cleanse, after going back to this book Clean, by Alejandro Junger.…
The Foxfire Books: How to Make Moonshine, Rain and Fiddles
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The Happiness Project
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Link Love: Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated (VIDEO)
Posted by BrainPickings.com, "Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated in Stop-Motion" Just lovely. …
Get High Now
This is rather a wondrous book by James Nestor, filled with practical and often hilarious advice on…
Expecting Adam
This is one of those books that filled me with light. Martha Beck writes about her pregnancy with…
Ordinary Life
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No One Belongs Here More Than You
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Stranger than Fiction
Do you ever feel as though your life is being narrated? Or as though you may…
Darjeeling Limited
Pretty, pretty movie, the Darjeeling Limited. That's just how Wes Anderson…
It was always about the dance
You know that, don't you, Scott Hastings? Maybe the Ballroom Dancing…
Take Polaroids of Your TV Screen
Take Polaroids of your tv screen while Lucas dances, black eyes, black hair,…
Little Miss Sunshine
I just had my Little Miss Sunshine moment with some lovely adobe colored…

In the garden
Radish harvest morning. Also bunny spotting. Also gloriously beautiful. Also camera batteries…
Sprouts
There's a garden that grows in the backyard, sprouts coming up from seeds. Every morning, more…
How about awesome?
Awesome people hanging out together: an awesome Tumblr blog. This will cheer you up if you need…
Little Portals
Sometimes I want to give you everything. Yes, you, reading this now. I sit in the morning darkened…
Being Happy and Being Inspired Makes Happy Inspired Art
My dear friend and amazing human being Liz Sheehan is the director of Partners in the Arts, a…
Being Grateful
I've started to notice that there is something about being grateful that seems to change my way of…
Angels in plain sight
Imagine that everywhere you go, there are angels in plain sight. Your waiter, for…
What if?
What if no job or house or car or ideal weight or ideal husband is what is going to make you…
Loving Kindness
Send love into your body -- your heart, your cheekbones, your belly. Know that you are love in…
Take a train
Take a train in the morning. Sit on the side where the sun is and watch it light the trees, the…

Yesterday On the River
My darling son Kenny was in town this weekend and we went to the James River, by way of what's…
My Planet: Healing with Whales and Other Stories
My dear and lovely friend Leah Lamb has launched My-Planet.org, and with it brings to life her…
Animal, you, animal, me
These images by Gregory Colbert in his exhibit, Ashes and Snow, make me feel completely weepy. Just…
Link Love: Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated (VIDEO)
Posted by BrainPickings.com, "Michael Pollan's Food Rules Animated in Stop-Motion" Just lovely. …
Being Tree-like
You may not seem to be doing anything much in the way of production, like clocking work hours or…
Still
I was walking by the ocean today with some dear and lovely friends and found myself thinking of…
One Love, One Heart (VIDEO)
This video, a compilation piece performed by musicians all around adding their part, had me…
Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland 2011
I found this on laughingsquid.com. Such a lovely place to find delight. Aurora Borealis in…
Utah's salt flats
Just surreal. That white you see is…
This makes me want to learn how to knit. For real this time...
...and to learn more about these fabulous people at Fibershed. Here's an excerpt from the Etsy…