September 7, 2024 I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone. ~ Charles de Lint Without intending to, I’ve turned giving my […]

September 1, 2024 Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears!… Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea? ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Time   I don’t feel like I have a hall pass from the Universe to indulge in a negative […]

August 29, 2024 If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe…This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave. ~ Eckhart Tolle When thinking about that statement of […]

August 24, 2024 I like the story where the cowboy lives because the bullet struck the whiskey flask instead of his thin-walled heart… I’ve come to appreciate the happy ending, no matter how tacky or unearned. ~Kristen Tracy, Happy Endings   I periodically cycle through this thought process: You want to live peacefully alone and […]

August 21, 2024 The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. ~Elizabeth Bishop, One Art   Just a few seconds in to Kerry K’s recent video, I realized that she was speaking to me. We are finally letting go, […]

August 3, 2024 Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, Op. 40, is based on the French legend that Death packs a fiddle and comes to play at midnight on Halloween, causing the skeletons in the cemetery to crawl out of the ground for their annual graveyard dance party. ~ Andrea Warne Not long ago, the idea of braving […]

July 27, 2024 Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you. ~ Eckhart Tolle The more I understand what the ego is, the harder it is to keep from treating it as an enemy, something I want no part of. But trying to vanquish ego is a quixotic battle, since […]

July 20, 2024 All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little. ~ Lafcadio Hearn It’s almost comforting to deal with a mundane problem when the world is splintering and each moment unfolds with greater mystery than the last.  My cats are the early alert system when ants start coming in. […]

June 2, 2024 No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they […]

May 25, 2024 In the pocketed dark behind fireplace brick, sprawls a hidden house of light. ~Pamela Gross, The Hive   I haven’t been able to contemplate the bee invasion and subsequent rescue with anything but anxiety since the little critters set up a colony in an outside wall here in mid-April. For days before […]

May 11, 2024 During a bad day A little bit of sugar Can go a long way ~Olivia Hooper, Sweet Comfort   Something feels off kilter about taking the all-or-nothing approach to sugar consumption. Telling myself to not do a certain thing feels hopelessly outdated. Even a reminder to be alert to sugary foods (go […]

May 6, 2024 For something so small, it wreaks havoc. Feeds on my sweat. Opens old wounds. She hisses demands, and I do nothing but obey. No one sees me, she says. Only you and the choke-chain around your neck. ~Sarah Nichols, The Monkey on My Back   While I was restlessly shifting, trying to […]

April 30, 2024 Forget not the central truth that God is seated / In your own heart. ~ Swami Ramdas Although being mobile again through the intervention of hip replacement surgery is fantastic, I’m still “old” and getting older. So I haven’t forgotten the promise of the med beds. However, having been restored to a […]

April 27, 2024 For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. ~ Vladimir Nabokov I had a most unpleasant day, last Wednesday. It was all about my mood, although I blamed it on the frustrating retail […]

April 20, 2024 No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. ~John Donne, No Man Is an Island   I’ve been doing little the past seven weeks but burrow into an insular world of post-surgery recovery. Although I feel solitary, I am […]