Watch Your Language
One of these days, I’ll get to It’s Not About Food by Carol Normandie and Laurelee Roark. It’s there on my shelf. If I stand up and take a few steps, I can have it in my hot little hand before you…
Sharing an Apple
Poet Jane Hirshfield is new to me. Robert Bly is the one who introduced us, in his book, Looking for Dragon Smoke, and although I knew Bly’s name, I had paid it no attention (perhaps because none of my college…
Taking a Safety
I got to the computer yesterday by way of Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Ensouling Language, a book I am still s-l-o-w-l-y making my way through (and now that I’ve shared it with Dennis, it’s often in his office, where I don’t…
Continue the Conversation
Everything is interconnected, which is why I cannot try to isolate the books I read. I need to keep a dozen or so in process. I need to stop worrying about not finishing one or another: no more self-imposed rules,…
Holding onto My Own Soul
I sometimes worry that I’ll copy down 99 percent of the words in this book, and if I do that, it will mean that I’m still trying to hide behind the words of others, still trying to avoid my own.…
On the Hunt
Quiet weekend afternoons in my adolescent years were sometimes spent reorganizing dresser drawers and closet shelves. My mother was pleased to get things straightened up and pared down, but I was in it for the treasures to be found, the…
Reading, Writing, Rules, and Reason
Was it a year ago already that a friend told me about an unlikely book she was reading and finding fascinating? I describe the book as unlikely because if anyone were taking bets on either of us reading it, he…
We Are Not Crazy
Our disconnection from nature and our disavowal of interior depth—of soul—from animals, plants, and landscapes occurs all the time in all of us. But there is more depth than we have come to believe, than we have been taught. Connection…