jillsalahub

1. Poetry: All Day I Wanted To Cry and Before the Doctor from Julie Barton, and And Then It’s Exponential from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

2. A Hall Pass from the Universe from Laurie Wagner. Laurie is also offering a free four day session of wild writing, Writing As Medicine, June 2nd – June 5th. It is such a beautiful, meaningful practice, and has been for me ever since I first wrote with Laurie twelve years ago.

3. Good stuff from Seth Godin: The most important decision, 1,000 fans (which sort?), Worthless noise isn’t information, and The 1:1 method.

4. Good stuff from Patti Digh: You deserve delight and Radical Tenderness is a practice, which implies practicing. Like, daily.

5. “We need you, We need you.” Kaira Jewel’s May 2025 Newsletter.

6. On The Morning Of A Massacre Of American Schoolchildren by Rita Ott Ramstad.

7. Unsilenced Bodies with Abigail Rose Clarke and Catherine Simone Gray. (video) “Why we need the subversive practices of listening to the body and listening to nature with Abigail Rose Clarke and Catherine Simone Gray. What does it mean to be in an intimate relationship with our bodies? How do we ‘follow our heart’? How do we ‘listen to our gut feeling’? How do we disentangle trauma responses from the deep, true voice of our intuition?”

8. Root Beer floats, Cartwheels & LSD…“the language of dying by Maria Elena Chilton (+writing prompts)” on Writing At Red Lights.

9. 10 things I’ve been telling myself, “Short & sweet reminders” from Meg Josephson.

10. Spring Lilacs, “Lessons in dormancy and renewal” by Kristi Marciano on Orion Magazine.

11. Sometimes a Rose is Just a Rose. “A conversation about gardening, loss, and the end of metaphor” with Yiyun Li and Manjula Martin.

12. Are you a people pleaser? It’s time to find out what you really want.

13. The people refusing to use AI.

14. I stopped feeling guilty about wanting a simpler life – Slow living reflections. (video) “Twelve years ago, I moved to the countryside in search of a simpler life. At first, I felt guilty — for slowing down, for not chasing the ‘normal’ path, for wanting something quieter. In this video, I reflect on what I’ve let go of since choosing slow living: the guilt around resting, the pressure to be productive 24/7, the inability to set boundaries, the notion that being an introvert was somehow wrong or the myth that I should be living a different live, chasing success like everyone else. I’ve learned to embrace intentional living and find beauty in life’s imperfections, accepting myself as I am. If you’re drawn to mindful living, life in the countryside, or just craving more stillness, I hope this resonates. This is a gentle reflection for anyone feeling out of place in a fast-paced world. Whether you’re exploring slow living, learning to embrace your introverted nature, or just dreaming of a slower life close to nature — this is for you.”

15. Navigating by aliveness from The Imperfectionist. “In a world where tech commentators confidently declare that we poor ignoramuses haven’t even begun to get our heads around what’s barreling down the tracks towards us, I think it’s good to stay fully, even slightly foolishly, committed to the idea that humans doing human things, with other humans, is and will remain at the vital heart of human existence. Because otherwise what on earth’s the point?”

16. Repeat After Me: AI Doesn’t Know Anything from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds.

17. I’ve been counting cans again: How do we live in these times? by Ijeoma Oluo. “If I can’t guarantee my safety in the world, if I can’t guarantee the safety of my friends and family, I can at least be a safe space for them, and they can be for me. If I can’t build a safe world, I can build moments of freedom and choose to rejoice in them. If I can’t protect our bodies I can protect our joy. If I can’t guarantee that I will be here tomorrow, I can at least ensure these words are here today.”

18. What Was The Summer Vacation? Everything and Nothing, All At Once by Anne Helen Petersen. “Last week, I asked Culture Study subscribers to describe their summer family vacations: where they went, of course, but also how they understood the purpose and meaning of their family’s choices. What did they remember? How has that memory shifted with time? Who did the labor? How did it feel? What mattered — and what didn’t? A few themes emerged — ones that are worth turning over as we approach this summer and the perceived demand for highly orchestrated family leisure.”

19. Heart of the Matter: A Special Series on Narratively. “In this collection, we explore everything from an epic heartbreak, to a life-saving operation with a twist, to a true mystery involving suspicious infant deaths, and more.”

20. Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism. “Because resistance isn’t only about saying no, here are seven ways communities are building a future worth saying yes to.”

21. Craig Mod on the Creative Power of Walking. “From this boredom, words flow. I can’t stop them.”

22. #1000WordsofSummer 2025 FAQ, a really great writing “summer/boot camp” led by Jamie Attenberg that starts May 31st. And yes, I’m doing it. Join us?

23. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren Reads 100 Acts of Trump Corruption Into Congressional Record To Mark 100 Days of the Trump Administration.

24. Baby buffalo zoomies. (Facebook reel)

25. Visit one of Brooklyn’s greenest blocks in the heart of Flatbush. (Facebook reel) “On a rainy day in the middle of spring, East 25th Street between Clarendon Road and Avenue D is already bursting with life. The block has been crowned victorious in BBG’s Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest five times; many of the block’s gardeners now also mentor budding gardeners elsewhere in the borough. Neighbors Vera, Dian, Trevor, Luke, Trang, and Max were kind enough to show us around the block to talk community building and urban greening strategies.”

26. Elevated did Prince right with this 1st place performance. (Facebook reel) This gave me goosebumps.

27. Button-sized eggs and teapot cities: A peek into the big, wide world of miniatures.

28. ‘Pee-wee as Himself’ gives unprecedented access to an eccentric comedy legend.

29. ‘The Emperor of Gladness’ is a beautiful novel about hard work and found family.

30. The Brilliant Milky Way Connects Photographers Around the Globe and Beyond in an Annual Contest.

31. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone this week.

~This started as a wild write with my Friday morning sangha. The poem we were writing to is Maggie Nelson’s “Birthday Poem.”

I should write you all the time, tell you about this space inside me, like the hollow of a bell. I think we all have it, this space, this hollow inside. Most of us spend so much time thinking of it as a hole, a void, a wound. We think we need to fill it, to fix it. We treat it as a problem but what if it is exactly what it’s supposed to be: empty space? A portal, a passage, a path? What if healing has more to do with accepting, surrendering to the space, the unknown, the mystery? Maybe we should see it for what it is — empty, yes, but luminous.

My Buddhist name, the one I was given when I took my refuge vows, translates to “space dancer.” I was taught that this name is a tool for practice, that it holds the capacity to be both transparent, a clear description of something true, AND a riddle you spend your life attempting to unravel, like a Zen koan. And it’s been that way for me — it makes absolute sense that it would be my name AND remains a mystery. In terms of that space inside, like the hollow of a bell, it seems to be an instruction — dance with the space, in the space, ring the bell and others will hear it exactly because it is empty to begin with, you are empty and the way you move against it will make it sing.

On our morning walk, a red winged blackbird flew over my head as we made our way along the path next to the water. As it flew, it sang, and I wondered, again, how something so small can make such a big noise. Even during the effort of flight, it still could do it. Chickadees are similar, so tiny and skittish but also able to make such a big sound. What it must feel to sing like that, to have it fill you like breath, to feel the sound reverberate as your lungs empty, to feel it vibrate in the hollow of your throat as it goes.

And what it must feel like to fly, and as I say that I remember that some bird bones are hollow. I always guessed that was part of why they can fly, but when I look it up, these hollow places, this space inside like the hollow of a bell, actually helps them breathe. They are called “pneumatic bones” and they help birds to fly not because it makes them lighter but rather they need so much oxygen to fly that their lungs extend into some of their bones. The hollow and the breath allow the flight as well as the song.

This morning, as I listened to the music track I picked for meditation, which included the sounds of rain and wind and bamboo and a guitar, it made me think of the story about the musician who climbs to the top of a mountain to ask a teacher how to practice. The teacher, knowing the question is coming from a musician, uses an example he’ll understand, referencing the strings of his instrument, and gives the practice instruction that I’ve heard Pema Chödrön give: “not too loose, not too tight.” If the strings of your instrument are too loose, they won’t make a sound, and if they are too tight, they will break. Therefore, to practice, you must keep yourself not too loose and not too tight.

Then I thought about a guitar and how like the bell and the bird it can feel the music they make because of the hollow spot, the empty space. The guitar and the bell and the bird vibrate with the sound of their particular song, can feel it inside even as they let it go, literally hold space for it in their own emptiness, and that holding and eventual letting go, that hollow is what allows it to echo out as music. And in this way, through the holding and letting go, both the origin point of the song and where the music lands can feel it in that hollow space they each have inside.

It is the same when making any art, any offering that comes from a truth previously held hidden. The artist feels their voice, their truth like breath in the hollow space inside. If we instead try to fill that space, that hollow of the bell, with other things, thinking we must fill the emptiness, heal the wound, what actually happens is we are silenced, stuck, unable to sing or fly or even breathe. So the food, the phone, the drug, the new furniture or whatever we reach for to fill the void is in the end just junk, a heap, a pile, a hoard that doesn’t truly fill us up but rather traps us, turns us into a hungry ghost who can never be satisfied. We misunderstand so much about the emptiness, get so confused about the space inside us, like the hollow of a bell. Empty yes, but also luminous.