the beauty that is everywhere

love notes to the world at large.

This page is having a slideshow that uses Javascript. Your browser either doesn't support Javascript or you have it turned off. To see this page as it is meant to appear please use a Javascript enabled browser.

Everyday Adventures in Beingness: Some Ideas

Everyday Adventures in Beingness: Some Ideas

Here 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 ...

Let the Mystery Be – Iris Dement (VIDEO)

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."

Love Beams Back

Somehow, 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 ...

Station Wagons

Just 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 ...

Wyoming, further

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.

Heck yeah, Caitlin

Heck yeah, Caitlin

I 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 ...

It was always about the dance

It was always about the dance

You 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?

The Kool-Aid Wino, and other stories

The Kool-Aid Wino, and other stories

These 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 ...

Believe me

Some 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 ...

The sinking of a ship

The sinking of a ship

I 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. ...

Treat. Yo. Self.

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:

Angels in plain sight

Angels in plain sight

Imagine 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 ...

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 ...

Dance is a very powerful drug

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 ...

Illinois

This 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 ...

What happens if the power goes out?

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 ...

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 ...

Stranger than Fiction

Stranger than Fiction

Do 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, ...

Camper Dream

In 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 ...

Kenny in that Grand Canyon [video]

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 ...

Loving Kindness

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 ...

Into the mystic

Into the mystic

Ah, it's played at last. No road trip would be complete without it.

On Grocery Stores

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 ...

My mother: the worshiper of language

The Mother of Language

I 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 ...

World Exploded Into Love All Around Me

World Exploded Into Love All Around Me

And 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 ...

Ordinary Life

A 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 ...

Take Polaroids of Your TV Screen

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 ...

Tap here

Tap 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 ...

The Road

There 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.

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 ...

A Chromatic Typewriter: For Re-Writing History

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.

Being Tree-like

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, ...

Road

I 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 ...

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.

Diners Are Portals

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 ...

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 ...

Magic Wands are Regular

Magic Wands are Regular

I 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 River

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, well, ordinary. This is, ...

Climbing the Tor

Climbing the Tor

It 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 ...

Photograph by Ardean Miller

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.

Les émotifs anonymes

Les émotifs anonymes

Yes, okay. Oui, ca va. Je comprend.

Radio silence (Sedona/beauty/road trip)

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 ...

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 ...

Collect stories

Collect stories

When 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 ...

Where is it, this true home of yours?

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 ...

We are a mile high

We are a mile high

Over a mile, actually. Altitude 6,000 ft. Heading into Flagstaff.

Bubbles

In 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 ...

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 ...

Type Love Courtesy of Samantha Hahn

Little Portals

Sometimes 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 ...

Goodwater

Kenny told me once when he was little that he'd been drinking godwater from flowers. Goodwater/Godwater. Same/same.

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 Books” at our book club today. Our conversation was around self-sufficiency and being attuned to the earth and the land around us, and she said that she grew up with these books and loved to read through them when she was back home. As you can see from the cover, you can learn such intriguing things as hog dressing, log cabin building, mountain crafts and foods, planting by the signs, snake lore, moonshining and — my personal favorite — faith healing. (Always interesting to hear how other healers roll.) I hadn’t heard of any of this, having spent most of my youth in the heart of suburbia where one didn’t even think of making one’s own butter, let alone making one’s own rain.

There are twelve books in the series and though I’ve mainly switched over to ebooks at this point since I love reading on my iPad, these are special. I think I should like the whole set.

Thanks, Katie!

Here are the first six books:

	The Foxfire Book: Hog Dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain Crafts and Foods, Planting by the Signs, Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing, Moonshining, and Other Affairs of Plain Living
	Foxfire 2: Ghost Stories, Spring Wild Plant Foods, Spinning and Weaving, Midwifing, Burial Customs, Corn Shuckin’s, Wagon Making and More Affairs of Plain Living
	Foxfire 3: Animal Care, Banjos and Dulcimers, Hide Tanning, Summer and Fall Wild Plant Foods, Butter Churns, Ginseng, and Still More Affairs of Plain Living
	Foxfire 4: Fiddle making, spring houses, horse trading, sassafras tea, berry buckets, gardening, and other affairs of plain living
	Foxfire 5: Rain-making, blacksmithing, bear hunting, flintlock rifles, and more
	Foxfire 6: Shoemaking, 100 toys and games, gourd banjos and song bows, wooden locks, a water-powered sawmill, and other fascinating topics

Mural Craft
The town comes through here. My wife combs their hair, adjusts their chins with her…
LaPorte
LaPorte, Indiana Trailer (by Jason Bittner & Joe Beshenkovsky) from Princeton Architectural…
for Kenny
…
for Corie
Iron and Wine perform 'Lion's Mane' on Sound Opinions from WBEZ on…
Everything
In that Leonard Cohen film I posted last time, LC talks of being interested in going through his…
Bubbles
In the writing group last night, we wrote. I kept turning on the porch light, walking out to…
my/mother/earth
My mother just showed me a page from a newspaper she'd saved from 1979 and tucked into her knitting…
River
you are the…
Tap here
Tap here to begin writing, someone whispered, and she realized it had already begun. It had started…
Momma Love Tea
Oh, my darlings, it has been most of the winter since I've written here. Kenny called me on his way…

LaPorte
LaPorte, Indiana Trailer (by Jason Bittner & Joe Beshenkovsky) from Princeton Architectural…
Heck yeah, Caitlin
I see I have some catching up to do. I'm only halfway through Caitlin Moran's "How to Be a…
PS
P.S. I have just a little more to say to you this morning, and it is this. J'adore Charles Simic.…
In the lovely month of September
Two much-awaited-by-moi masterpieces have come in to the world this September: Bob Dylan's…
Lately
For many years, whenever I've sat down and asked myself something along the lines of: "What does…
The Kool-Aid Wino, and other stories
These short stories are continually luminous to me, and when I read them -- or when I breathed them…
When I Am
Well said, Mary Oliver. Well said. When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary…
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. …

Mother Mountain
…
This guy
Pure genius and love in action. …
Momma Love Tea
Oh, my darlings, it has been most of the winter since I've written here. Kenny called me on his way…
Up to the Mountain
Patty Griffin's singing me up to the mountain as I head to Asheville for the holy days. Ahhhh,…
Plants to keep near
Well, this is pretty cool. Plants that clean up the air for you by eliminating formaldehyde and…
Rainwater
How brilliant is this? The elegant solution: store rainwater in your soil, where it's needed. …
Living the dream, baby
Lovely Northern Exposure. …
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…