Category Archives: Jamie Ridler

Something Good

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view of the high park fire as seen from my corner this afternoon

Kind and gentle reader, today’s post is hard. I need something good more than usual, keep asking Eric to “tell me something good,” but all I really want him to tell me is that this fire will stop, that no one else will lose their home or get hurt, that all the animals will be safe, that our favorite places to hike won’t completely burn up, and that it won’t reach us, that we aren’t in danger. The lizard part of my brain is having such a hard time with it, keeps screaming at me “grab the dogs and run!,” and my heart is just breaking for all the hurt and damage. The High Park Fire, as of the last update, was started by a lightning strike, has burned 36,930 acres and 100 structures, and is 0% contained.

So in light of all that, it feels a little silly, naive to share a list of things I saw this week that I thought where awesome, but at the same time, it feels more important than ever…does that make sense?

1. If you are interested in helping, one way to do so is to donate to the Larimer County Humane Society. They have taken in pets from evacuated homes, are “currently providing temporary shelter for cats, small mammals and farm animals (the size of a goat or smaller) displaced due to the High Park fire,” but are at capacity for dogs (in Colorado, we love us some dogs, so there are lots of them). They need help feeding the animals, so have set up a way for you to give a donation online. I’m sure there are plenty of other places to donate, this just happens to be the one closest to my heart.

2. The Denver Botanic Gardens. We needed a break from worrying about the fire today, so we took a spontaneous trip to Denver to look at things that were lush and alive. We walked around for over three hours, and I took lots of pictures, and we got lots of ideas for what to do with our new beds in our front yard. We were laughing at ourselves, because if you add in both dog walks, we did about 4.5 hours of walking today.

hidden bench, can you see it?

dreamy purple clematis

3. Kizuna exhibition at Denver Botanic Gardens. As a lover of most things Japanese and all things bamboo, I adored this strange and wonderful instillation spread throughout the gardens. “This season’s signature exhibition, Kizuna: West Meets East, brings together two installation artists working in bamboo: Tetsunori Kawana and Stephen Talasnik. Through different working methods, both artists employed this versatile natural material to create large site-specific works for the Gardens.”



4. I want to make this list: Jamie Ridler’s Discovering Delight. In fact, I think we should all make this list, throw out our “to-do” lists and live this one instead. I will if you will…

5. 7 Ways to Celebrate Summer from Positively Present. This list is a good start, but I bet if we tried really, really hard, we could think of more than seven ways.

6. How to Make a Living as an Artist at Create as Folk, by Laura Simms. Be sure to watch the video, if for no other reason than Laura is just so stinking cute.

7. How to Unstress and Truly Enjoy Your Vacation from the Positivity Blog. Can you tell where my head is at?

8. Welcome to the World, Book Baby by Susannah Conway. This is a really great post about her new book, This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart, how it came to be, and links to her virtual, online book tour.

9. Really cool terrariums by the slug and the squirrel.

10. Photo a Day, June Challenge List. I wish I had time, because I love this idea and think it would be really fun, so I’ll save the link and maybe do the one in July.

11. A sweet little video about life and how fast it goes by, in honor of the baby robins next door who are learning how to fly today.

12. The color of. Oh, I could waste so much time here…”a system created to find out the colour of anything, by querying and aggregating image data from Flickr, a popular online photo sharing community. It is an attempt at answering a potentially complex and abstract question in an objective manner, by using simple algorithms on data originating from subjective human perceptions.” You can search any term. Here are the ones I just made.

Love is cooler, calmer, gentler than fire, but they are clearly similar.

13. Quotes from Ray Bradbury on Brain Pickings. Ray Bradbury passed away this week at the age of 91. I adored him for most of my life, and am sad he’s gone, but glad he left such a wonderful legacy.

14. Want To Know Yourself Better? Ask Yourself These Questions from the Happiness Project. These look good.

15. You Can Be at Peace from Jennifer Louden. Oh how I adore her…

16. I love Rosie Thomas, and apparently, so does Susannah Conway, who shared this link to an interview with Rosie. I love hearing stories about how someone “finds art” or “becomes an artist,” those magical origin stories, and this article also pointed out that Rosie has a new album that I didn’t know about, which I am listening to as I write this post, (oh, and it’s really, really good, so #16.5 on the something good list is her new album).

17. Do These Petals Make My Stem Look Fat? by Sunni on the Daily Breadcrumb. Oh that Sunni, so precious, so brilliant. This post, which I adore because maybe you’ve noticed by now how much I love flowers?, also reminds me of this quote: “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change,” (Buddha, who is precious and brilliant as well).

18. This quote, shared by Judy Clement Wall in her latest post on A Human Thing: “You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.” ~ Ann Patchett, Yoga Journal

19. Calm.com, my new favorite website. Go ahead, try it and you’ll see what I mean.

20. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zero, Man on Fire.

i’m still standing

Wishcasting Wednesday

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from jamie’s post

What do you wish to delight in?

I wish to delight in things that are alive, that make me come alive and feel wide awake: color, strong feelings, flowers, trees, green soft grass under my bare feet, birds and insects in flight, soft animal bodies, fresh and luscious food, movement, music, song, dancing, books, someone telling the truth and being brave even when it’s hard and even when they aren’t sure if they’ll be able to, the constant dependability of the waves and the sunrise and breath, things hand and heartmade, friends, long conversations, open hearts, laughter, his smile, the way he looks at me, the wag of their tails, a deep sigh, love, love, love. Even hard goodbyes, because if you love someone so much that their leaving unhinges you, and all either of you can do is look into each others eyes and cry (but you are looking, seeing, fully present with that person and that pain), and when you hug that last time, you don’t want to let go, it means that you’ve loved, and are loved, and I want that.

I wish to delight in the wisdom, gentleness, kindness, and strength of my highest, best self. She has such power, is filled with such love, and speaks to me with such confidence and clarity, knows how to be and what to do, carries the truth. She sometimes sends me messages through this blog, telling me secrets, encouraging me, telling me she’ll never give up, no matter what. She whispers to me in my dreams, in moments of stillness, by way of my intuition and through the beat of my heart. She knows what’s best, has every answer to every question that will every arise, and all I have to do is listen and trust her. She’ll never lie, never try to trick or manipulate me–she loves me.

I wish to delight in rest and play. I know I say this over and over, but my current approach to life–mostly work, work until I can’t possibly work any more–isn’t sustainable, and is certainly not motivated by love. I want love and joy and mindfulness of the present moment to be as necessary to me, as lovely and desirable as work, task, and toil.

I wish to delight in time and space. I want to be in the moment, experience and appreciate who and what is happening, show up with the confidence Susan Piver describes, “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”

I wish to delight in my physical sense of taste and movement, in my senses. This is a direct connection between myself and reality, the most vivid and immediate way in to the present moment. Eating, moving (“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.” ~Osho), breathing in air and scent, listening and looking at the whole precious world, taking it all in, the beauty and the brutality, experiencing it, even in moments of rest and stillness, connected and aware that I am alive.