In my experience, places where people come together to work on their issues — spiritual communities; self-actualization, therapy, and intentional change groups; small gatherings devoted to identifying and resolving personal gunk — become, by necessity, very gunky oceans of gunk. And when… Read full post »

 

I’m high! I’m drunk with beauty! I’m over the moon!

 

This morning I took a three-hour walk in the park. It is the Friday before the New York City Marathon, and people are everywhere, speaking every language on the planet, excited to be in… Read full post »

 “So how do you know the difference between going with the flow and letting yourself drown?” writes author Eileen Flanagan in her new book, The Wisdom to Know the Difference (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, Sept. 2009). “One answer is to see if what is flowing withi… Read full post »

 

I suddenly realized that my unemployed lulls are a great time to read the “I’m-gonna-read-that-someday” pile. Here are a couple of interesting facts from two sources in that pile:

 

1. In How God Changes Your Brain, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, M.D., says t… Read full post »

 

Since I finished writing a new novel, I’ve been down. It’s the contraction that inevitably follows the expansion of creative emission, I tell myself. Or maybe it’s the fact that my agent says that nobody’s buying fiction, no matter how good or well-written or fu… Read full post »

“Body movements affect emotional processes. For example, adopting the facial expressions of specific emotions (even via unobtrusive manipulations) affects emotional judgments and memories,” says a study in the August 25th volume of Psychological Science. So here is me, writing this blog:… Read full post »

 

 

There are three pertinent pieces of background to this story: 

(1) I am allergic to tomato plants; 

(2) It takes approximately 500 years for a plastic bag to decompose in a landfill;

(3) Anything that demonstrates a determination to stay alive is an object of my admira

… Read full post »

 

Strength, manifesting as gentleness to oneself, produces non-aggression.  Read full post »

 I just learned about a new service that advertises: “Create the Illusion of Communication!”

This phone company will connect your call straight to somebody’s voicemail, bypassing all human contact. A good thing?

What have we become? What are we becoming? What are we… Read full post »

 

 Theo Kamecke lives alone in and on five acres of breathtaking art in the Catskill Mountains. The man simply must create art — whether it’s a garden, a home furnished with handmade everything, a meal for guests, or a log bench overlooking a… Read full post »

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There is a new trend in business. It’s a sometimes-desperate scramble to pinpoint the latest trends in order to be on the forefront, the cutting edge, the winning team … in order to make lots and lots of money. But there may be a problem with this. There… Read full post »

A provocative title, huh? I’m trying to get attention. Did I succeed? Are you still reading? 

I recently saw the DVD of the movie Lars and the Real Girl, which is very good, although more painful than a “hilarious, heartwarming, feel-good movie” of any season. But those kinds… Read full post »

  

 

“Hallelujah!” shouted a man after the first movement of J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, played with simultaneous passion and heartbreaking sweetness by Lara St. John. 

Hundreds of us felt the same as we listened, spellbound, to the fi… Read full post »

It’s another soggy day in New York City, so it seems appropriate to talk about my posture. I have lousy posture. I slump with my chin out and up like a turtle and, since I’m very flexible, I have a tendency to sit with pretzel legs. I also have a big,… Read full post »

Last night I watched Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary about our health-care system. A guy at the grassroots Health Care Organizing Kickoff meeting last weekend referenced it a few times, and since I missed it when it was in theaters, I got it at the New York Public Library. This/… Read full post »

I’m living on unemployment at the moment, so I’m consuming a lot less than I used to. And that means I think a whole lot about what I’m choosing to consume. Below, for my own gratitude and ventilation, are some Rants & Raves. Feel free to add your own in… Read full post »

From the bowels of this recession, I read my most recent college alumni news, and I found myself wondering if I was the only one with a less than stellar career. Were all of these perpetually successful alumni telling the whole truth? 

So here, from the Spring 2009 Alumni News… Read full post »

I didn’t watch American Idol this season, so I didn’t understand my friend’s feelings when she first emailed and then phoned about her despair that a young singer named Adam Lambert hadn’t won the competition. She described the moment when the public declared another s…

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I’ve been kind of blue this week. Actually, that’s inaccurate. I’ve been red — beet red with eyelids that look like obese shellfish — but blue is more descriptive of my mood. A red mood sounds angry. I haven’t felt angry. I just enjoy vision. Apparently swel… Read full post »

I’ve been thinking a lot about who we are as a species this week. Endless days of rain and unemployment have that effect on me. The last time it rained this way, I went to the American Museum of Natural History where I stared for a long time at this lovely… Read full post »

  

 

 “Here’s the thing,” I seem to be saying. “I really like flowers, but my eyes no longer open enough to fully enjoy their colorful fluorescence because of my gravity-challenged brows. And I think, doctor, I sincerely believe that I should be gi… Read full post »

In this time of risk-taking based on promises of exorbitant returns from precarious investments, what could be more timely than the tale of growing up in a community where everybody has surrendered all decision-making and self-responsibility for the promise of divine protection and maybe God… Read full post »

  

It may seem paradoxical that reading about panic attacks due to overwhelming professional success and an abundance of work is calming to a person who’s been unemployed for months and battered by the recession, but that was my experience reading Mary Pipher’s new book/… Read full post »