the beauty that is everywhere

my love notes to the world

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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.
Pretty Food and Electronic Geekery
You know, don't you, what it's like to want to eat pretty colors? This Fennel, Beet and Citrus Salad from BrooklynSupper.net is literally the prettiest food I've ever seen. No geekery there! Just pretty food -- Elizabeth Stark is a gifted photographer as well as a gifted cook. Pretty food has color to it. And color is a sign of nutrients. When a plant is grown in mineral-rich soil, it absorbs those nutrients, and is hardy ...
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 ...
Julie's Bollywood Dream Lives in Holly's Backyard [video]
When was living in the Bay area last summer and was homesick for my girls in Richmond, I just put this video on. Aren't they wondrous? Julie had always wanted to be in a Bollywood movie. Her dear friends saw no reason why this couldn't be so. So Heidi choreographed the dance moves, Holly hosted the location, and Katie arranged with her filmmaker husband James to film the whole thing. So now Julie's in a Bollywood ...
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.
Airstreams are beautiful
They 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.
The Happiness Project
And while we are on the subject of happiness this week, let's give a shout out to The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin's memoir about her year-long study of happiness. Her website is a lovely place to spend time, and meditate on what happiness is for you. Be sure and report back what you find. Or tell me about other people and places of beauty and happiness that are near and dear to your heart, and should ...
Tibetan Sound Healing (VIDEO)
Enjoy this pure love...
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 ...
Oprah on Stillness and Meditation
Hey now, a gathering of goddesses!! I am pretty sure we're all going to love the world these women are dreaming up for us. Oprah on Stillness and Meditation - Oprah Visits Fairfield Iowa, a/k/a TM Town.
A Chromatic Typewriter: For Re-Writing History
More 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.
Quantum Physics and the fundamental unity of life
When science bears witness to love. When Russell Brand narrates our enlightenment. When meditating alone brings us closer to everyone. That's what now is.
Hello Art Lovers!
Mary Poppins and Bert really had it going on, don't you think? There is nothing like jumping into a sidewalk chalk landscape to while away the day.
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 ...
The Healthy Apple's Healthy Food Shopping List
This is a really thoughtful healthy food shopping list put together by Amie Valpone of The Healthy Apple: Your Guide to Clean Eating. I am a new fan! With a list like this, you and your shopping cart will feel so very beautiful. Image courtesy of Amie Valpone, The Healthy Apple.com.
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.
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.
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
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 ...
Diners Are Portals
Laundromats 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 Queen and peer inside. This morning we stopped at a diner on the way back to the beach. The dogs waited patiently in the car, certain ...
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 ...
Wyoming, further
The 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.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Miranda July made this website a few years back for her book, "No One Belongs Here More Than You." The book, of course, is wonderful and amazing, as it would have to be with such a title and such an author. The website is seriously my favorite ever. I just wanted to add it here to my on-line scrapbook of wonder. This is a photo from the sequence in her website where she is dressing ...
The definition of happiness
Happy Sunday, you beautiful world. Today we meditate on happiness, here at TheBeautyThatIsEverywhere.com. Play this lovely little video montage of "Roman Holiday" put together by RavewoodLamenti for her sister's birthday. When you see Audrey Hepburn sleeping happily on the bench, drowsily say these words for her: "SO O O O HAPPY..." And then, perhaps, pay a visit to the incredibly lovely Wordswarm.net and look up the definition of happiness....here are a couple of excerpts from Wordswarm ...
Get High Now
This is rather a wondrous book by James Nestor, filled with practical and often hilarious advice on being-ness. The full title of the book is "Get High Now *without drugs" and has, according to the book cover, "over 175 sensory trips and tricks for visual stimulation, compressing time, lucid dreaming, meditation and more." I am getting a copy for all of the dreamers I love. I should mention that the book's website offers an extravaganza ...
Brackets
I have never really been a sports-watcher, unless it's U.S. Open Tennis matches between Nadal and Federer or possibly Italian and French men playing soccer. Talk about beauty being everywhere. When I was little and the entire family was watching sports and yelling at the teams on the television, drinking Tab and eating grilled cheese sandwiches -- all activities which were foreign to my sensitive little self -- I pretty much assumed I was adopted. I ...
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.
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 ...
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.

Diners Are Portals

Laundromats 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 Queen and peer inside.

This morning we stopped at a diner on the way back to the beach. The dogs waited patiently in the car, certain I would reappear with a diner burger and diner bacon for them and of course they were right. We are all always right.

I am hoping Eli will be so enchanted with the bacon and the beach days that he will ignore proper medical advice that tells him to be sick and end his days in pain. Or I am hoping he will be so filled up with joy that he levitates up up up like Remedios the Beauty and I will know with great certainty that everything I have believed about him is true. Or I am hoping he does whatever he does and I will love every moment of him.

Feeding Myself Healthy Food
My feeling is this: our bodies are complete miracles. And probably we are…
EWG's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database
Have you heard about this database of beauty products? You can look up the…
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
My friend Katie, who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, mentioned the "hippy Foxfire…
The Happiness Project
And while we are on the subject of happiness this week, let's give a shout out to The Happiness…
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
A quote from Jan Frazier, "When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening" --What do I want…
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Miranda July made this website a few years back for her book, "No One Belongs Here More Than You."…
"Glad No Matter What:" A Book by SARK
I am reading this really lovely book by Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (aka SARK), called Glad No…

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…