Happy Birthday Nina Simone [& a Brief Blog Hiatus]

Happy birthday, Miss Simone. Though unrelated to the exquisite Miss Simone’s birthday… You may have noticed that things have been a little too quiet in this portal of late, a little too light on posts and short on prose. I had hoped to be sharing something of value for you now, something edifying, inspiring, healing too, and a […]

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Pema Chödrön on Why to Meditate

We do not meditate in order to be comfortable. In other words, we don’t meditate in order to always, all the time, feel good. Meditation gives us the opportunity to have an open, compassionate attentiveness to whatever is going on. The meditative space is like the big sky— spacious, vast enough to accommodate anything that […]

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Diane Ackerman on Truly Living Our Lives

“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat an unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, […]

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Henry Miller on Art, Creation & Change

The artist is never defending art, but simply his own petty conception of art. Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. #Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. —Henry Miller Click To Tweet There is nothing but art, if you look at it properly. It is almost […]

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Music | Happy Birthday Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong

“The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.” ~ Louis Armstrong In honour of Louis “Satchmo” “Pops” “Ambassador Satch” Armstrong’s 114th birthday today, instead of sharing a poem, here’s a little musical interlude for you […]

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Poetry | Call Me by My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.   Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, […]

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