Category Archives: writing

Oct26

the ham of god

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I took this picture at the Putney School Harvest Festival two weeks ago.  I want to sleep like this.

I fell asleep last night laughing out loud listening to Anne Lamott’s Plan B:  Further thoughts on Faith.  Laughing into sleep is a great way to wake up.  When she talked about receiving a providential gift ham on her birthday at a grocery store, I lost it.  She wondered if it was “the ham of god.”

I am finding more ways to soften before sleep, and to soften into waking.  I find that it makes for a more fluid, creative day.  Abraham calls it “getting into the vortex.”  I have been listening to Abraham for about two years now, driving everywhere.  It is the best way that I have found to release resistance.

Resistance is on my mind as I am reading The War of Art. More about that tomorrow.

Abraham says find something to make you happy.  Last year, Emily Jones, the head of the Putney School encouraged students to look at something beautiful and let it make you happy. I have a long list, that includes horses’s noses, cat’s fur, my  daughters’ and Pam’s faces.

What makes you happy today?

 

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Oct24

skip

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Skipping

by Robert Morgan

A carburetor skips, and rocks
will skip along the surface of
a pond. A fugitive will skip
the country if he can, and crooks
will skip the payment of their debts.
And one can walk content or run
with joy across a summer field.
But why omitting steps is such
a sign of pleasure’s hard to say,
as if the gap and shift, the quick
eliding interruption of
a stride, reflects the shiver jolt,
releasing dance; accentuates,
as heart is said to skip a beat,
the lift, arrhythmic, breathless gasp
and rush and reach of crossing first
one threshold then another in
the vivid hop from foot to foot,
the hurrying toward and with delight.

“Skipping” by Robert Morgan, from Terroir. © Penguin, 2011. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

This is from The Writer’s Almanac.  Sent to me by my friend Suzanne.

Can you find a skip today?

Oct21

shelter

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I heard this version of Gimme Shelter by Playing for Change on the radio the other day and it has me thinking about shelter.

In writing my book, Horse Dancing, many of the artists I interview speak of the horse as shelter – a place of refuge and comfort.

Up here in the Adirondacks, away from home, I am aware that shelter is all my absent four-footed companions, and the familiar colors and shapes of my home. I shelter differently in each of my roles:  mother, artist, writer, rider, wife.

Shelter is improvisational too – we shape it as we travel, as we move from place to place, continually constructing little yurts, hollows, quiet corners in which to shelter.

Buddhists take refuge in the Buddha, the  dharma (the teachings), and the sanga (the community of practitioners.)

Where do you take shelter?  What is shelter for you?

Oct19

away

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Pam and I are in the Adirondacks for a few days of quiet. Maybe too quiet.  I miss the ruckus of our 8 cats and 4 dogs.   Precious, Obadiah, Nikita, Musia, Bella, Magdalena, Tallulah, Pachi, Jules, Guinevere, Cho, Liam.  I am not a minimalist in this regard.

On the other hand, this morning’s canoe and then long hike to the dam along the river was delicious.  Something we do not do at home.  Again, those cats and dogs.  Diving into the silence, the stillness is hard and good.

Pam read this post by Jon Katz to me this morning.  I am going to print it and read it every day.  Thank you Jon.  Thank you Pam.