1. Laughter in the dark. “A timid child of the suburbs, she has been dogged by anxiety for much of her life. As a teacher, living alone, she began to write mordantly witty verse about failed relationships. She is now one of our most popular and respected poets, and her latest collection reflects a new-found personal happiness.” I knew Wendy Cope’s poem The Orange, but the other day I read her poem “Defining the Problem” and it put words to an experience I’ve had for which I couldn’t quite find the right ones.
3. Wisdom from Emily Flake: “Those of us without MFAs or rich/connected parents or whatever the fuck—we have to carve a different path. Or in my case just thrash through the weeds until something like a path emerges.”
6. Michael Singer Podcast. “Join the New York Times bestselling author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrender Experiment, and Living Untethered for this free series of curated teaching sessions, recorded at his Temple of the Universe yoga and meditation center.”
15. Good stuff on Lion’s Roar: 4 Ways to Heal Yourself with Love (“Loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity—these four loving qualities, says Pawan Bareja, are powerful ways to heal our trauma”) and The Zen of Jane Hirshfield (“When we live in the liminal state, the place of listening, of not-knowing, then everything draws near to us, becomes kin. Noelle Oxenhandler on the words and wordlessness of the renowned American poet Jane Hirshfield”).
28. 63 Things To Declutter And Let Go Offrom Courtney Carver on Be More With Less. The full title of this post included “By The End Of The Year” but I just don’t need that kind of pressure.
29. Balancing Act, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
2. Novelist Jesmyn Ward: ‘Losing my partner almost made me stop writing’. “When the father of her children died suddenly, the US National Book award-winning author’s world fell apart. Three years on, she talks about grief, starting over and how she wrote her searing new novel about slavery.” In related news, on The New York Times, In Jesmyn Ward’s New Novel, Slavery Is Hell and Dante Is Our Guide. “‘Let Us Descend,’ by the two-time National Book Award-winning novelist, takes its title from the ‘Inferno’ and its subject from American history.”
6. Andrea Gibson: Facing Mortality and Being Adored and Cherished by the Universe. “Listen now to this poignant conversation featuring Andrea’s reading of their poem, ‘Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps’ and exploring spiritual surrender, finding joy in every instant, facing challenges, moving through grief, the life force of the universe within us, self-love and loving the whole world, trying softer (not harder), the power of relaxation, identifying the keys that open your heart, staying with our fear, activism and loosening our attachment to desired outcomes, being yourself fully, the gift of mortality, giving the present moment the cold shoulder, why authenticity is the most important thing when it comes to writing, the pull of creativity, and more.”
7. paradoxical truths: the aim of a spiritual practicefrom Abigail Rose Clarke, who says, “Life is nothing but layered paradoxes. And a spiritual practice – any spiritual practice – should be aiming towards being able to hold greater and greater paradoxes without feeling pushed apart at the seams. All the other benefits – the better sleep, and the greater patience, and in the case of body-based practices, all the glow and youth and ease that’s promised, are lovely side effects. But that isn’t the goal. The aim of any practice is to hold the immense truth of the world, which is to say, to hold its immense paradox.”
8. The Red Hand Files #257. Nick Cave responds to Noreen’s question: “Grief I find people have a hard time talking about my pain, lost my husband of 45 years. I want to talk about him, it makes people nervous. What can I do?”
9. Ch-ch-ch-changes…from Esmé Weijun Wang. “The year when everything changed.”
10. Those Little Brown Handsfrom Frederick Joseph. “A letter to late six-year-old Palestinian-American, Wadea al-Fayoume.”
12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön: “There is a teaching that says that behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased, that which can support and awaken us at any time.”
15. Good stuff on A Writer’s Notebook from Summer Brennan: Essay Camp? and Essay Camp: A November Write-Along and The Work, In Progress. And this she has to say about writing practice applies to any practice, “The ongoing process of writing is one of perpetual drift and return. We are pulled away from our writing practice and then we come back, over and over. Life, the noise of the world, and the constant clamor of our own personal responsibilities can make writing difficult. This habit of return is one of the most important skills that any writer can cultivate, whether we do it daily or only once every few years.” The point isn’t to do it perfectly, but when you notice you’ve drifted off or gotten hooked, you simply notice and come back, and you can do that as many times as you need to — “the habit of return,” the noticing is what matters.
16. The Goal Versus The Missionfrom Jami Attenberg. “I definitely strive for perfection in my work. I want to make something beautiful and seamless and special for everyone. Always, I want this. (I know you want this, too!) But striving for that perfection should never get in the way of making it to the finish line or even sitting down to do that work in the first place. Perfection is a goal but not the mission. Have a good week. I hope you fuck up a little bit.”
24. Hidden Brain Podcast: Escaping Perfectionism. “Perfectionism is everyone’s favorite flaw. It’s easy to assume that our push to be perfect is what leads to academic, athletic and professional success. But psychologist Thomas Curran says perfectionism has a dark side, and that there are much healthier ways to strive for excellence.”
28. Is a Women’s Museum Still Relevant?on The New York Times. “The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington reopens Oct. 21 after a renovation and the loss of its legendary leader. It faces a world that has changed its outlook significantly.”
29. Georgia deputy fatally shoots man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years. This is who we are — we right a wrong done and make the effort to free an innocent man from prison, we financially compensate him for the time he lost, which allows him to plan on attending college and buying a home, only to murder him during a traffic stop two years later.
36. Yayoi Kusama Apologizes for Past Racist Remarkson The New York Times. “Revelations from the artist’s autobiography threaten to cloud her new show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.”
37. The 300-year-old Japanese method of upcycling. “Sashiko is easy, practical and beautiful – and gaining fans around the world. Bel Jacobs speaks to practitioners to find out more.”
44. A Hospice Nurse on Embracing the Grace of Dyingon The New York Times. “A decade ago, Hadley Vlahos was lost. She was a young single mother, searching for meaning and struggling to make ends meet while she navigated nursing school. After earning her degree, working in immediate care, she made the switch to hospice nursing and changed the path of her life. Vlahos, who is 31, found herself drawn to the uncanny, intense and often unexplainable emotional, physical and intellectual gray zones that come along with caring for those at the end of their lives, areas of uncertainty that she calls ‘the in-between.'”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 