1. Poetry: Sleep by Matthew Dickman and February by Jim Moore on The Slowdown, Foundational by Julie Barton, The Art of Tragedy by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Prayer by Keetje Kuipers and An Ordinary Childhood by Morri Creech and There Is a Hole in My Living Room by Manuel Paul Lopez and “Honored Guest” Means, at The Sizzler, That I’m Old by Charles Harper Webb and Impasto by Alexander Bilzerian on The Daily Rattle, the art of losing by Rabha Ashry on Poets.org Daily Poem, Finding the Islands and Quiet Communion by James Crews, Because These Failures Are My Job by Alison Luterman on Heart Poems, Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, and Saturn’s Rings by Ellen Bass shared by Patti Digh.

P.S. A strange thing happened this week as I read through poems, selecting which ones to share: there were quite a few where my heart said, “nope, I can’t,” all of it just too raw and tender, both the poetry and my heart. It was like I was going through the house, hiding all the scissors and sharp knives, anything that might cut you or be used to cut, as if I could keep any of us safe.

2. Starting New vs. Joining an Existing Thing by Elise Granata on Group Hug.

3. Hungry Ghosts and the Five Buddha Families with Noah Kodo Roen, Sensei and Wendy Dainin Lau, MD, Sensei on Upaya Zen Center Podcasts.

4. A sweet collective list of small pleasures on Threads.

5. Forevergreen. (video) “Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. An orphaned bear cub finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree, until his hunger for trash leads him to danger.”

6. Passages from unknowable stories, a multimedia essay.

7. Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor, a Sounds True podcast. “What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere? Tami Simon speaks with beloved poet-philosopher Mark Nepo about his deeply moving new book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. Drawing from Chinese wisdom traditions and his own journey through chronic pain and back surgery, Mark illuminates aging as the ‘heavenly pivot’ (love that phrase) which is the transformative shift from living outwardly to inhabiting life from the inside out. Mark’s wisdom arises from decades of spiritual practice, surviving cancer, and facing the inevitable losses that come with a long life—essential listening for anyone navigating aging, chronic pain, loss, or simply seeking to live more fully present to the life they have.”

8. Good stuff on The Guardian: ‘You think: Do I really need anyone?’ – the hidden burden of being a hyper-independent person (“Self-reliance is often encouraged over asking others for help in the modern world. But doing everything yourself can be a sign that you are scared of intimacy”), and Facing meltdown? Over 75% of people suffer from burnout – here’s what you need to know (“Does it only affect weak people? Is work always the cause? Burnout myths, busted by the experts”) and ‘It’s the most urgent public health issue’: Dr Rangan Chatterjee on screen time, mental health – and banning social media until 18 (“The hit podcaster, author and former GP says a failure to regulate big tech is ‘failing a generation of children’. He explains why he quit the NHS and why he wants a ban on screen-based homework”).

9. How to Declutter Faster from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

10. Pat Porter: A Hidden Light, a documentary that “celebrates the life and work of Pat Porter (1944-2022), a prolific painter whose intimate still lifes, landscapes, and portraits were created over decades but never publicly shown during her lifetime.” (Thanks to Helen for sharing this on her weekly Slow-Small Media list).

11. Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts (trailer). “After nearly a decade away, Kumail Nanjiani returns to Chicago, where he got his start in standup, in a new special that tackles anxiety, the perils of buying drugs pre-legalization, and most importantly, cat medication.” I just watched this and it was really funny, and also so sweet. In related news, Zoltan Kaszas: London Fog was another good one, and you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube. “In his new stand-up special London Fog, comedian Zoltan Kaszas wrestles with anxiety, explores the many modern paths to parenthood, and reflects on growing up with a single immigrant mother—all while trying not to let success change him.”

12. What Love Looks Like, “a conversation on love, humanity, and spirituality with Tim DeChristopher” by Terry Tempest Williams and Tim DeChristopher on Orion. This is a few years old, but I just read it (as one of the essays included in her recent collection Erosion: Essays of Undoing). I’m so glad it’s available online so I can share it with you, in particular this section, which is weirdly hopeful even in its dire prediction:

TTW: But if it’s true, what Terry Root first told you — that there is no hope — then what’s the point?

TDC: Well there’s no hope in avoiding collapse. If you look at the worst-case consequences of climate change, those pretty much mean the collapse of our industrial civilization. But that doesn’t mean the end of everything. It means that we’re going to be living through the most rapid and intense period of change that humanity has ever faced. And that’s certainly not hopeless. It means we’re going to have to build another world in the ashes of this one. And it could very easily be a better world. I have a lot of hope in my generation’s ability to build a better world in the ashes of this one. And I have very little doubt that we’ll have to. The nice thing about that is that this culture hasn’t led to happiness anyway, it hasn’t satisfied our human needs. So there’s a lot of room for improvement.

TTW:How has this experience — these past two years — changed you?

TDC: [Sighing.] It’s made me worry less.

TTW: Why?

TDC: It’s somewhat comforting knowing that things are going to fall apart, because it does give us that opportunity to drastically change things.

13. Meditation can be harmful – and can even make mental health problems worse. This is an important thing to know if you are beginning a meditation practice.

14. Do You Have a “Jorge?” (video short) An important reminder about what matters in the long run.

15. How to Follow the News Without Getting Overly Upset by Leo Babauta on Zen Habits.

16. How Will the Miracle Happen Today? by Kevin Kelly on DailyGood. “Kindness is like a breath. It can be squeezed out, or drawn in. You can wait for it, or you can summon it. To solicit a gift from a stranger takes a certain state of openness. If you are lost or ill, this is easy, but most days you are neither, so embracing extreme generosity takes some preparation. I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate. Ironically, you are less inclined to be ready for the gift when you are feeling whole, full, complete, and independent! One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded.”

17. Dried leaves. Fresh buds. Danny Gregory’s reminder that it’s never too late to start.

18. queer as in refusing the given shape of things by Isabel Abbott on spells of survival.

19. Five minutes by Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk. “Because five minutes can lead to ten. Because a month of five minutes adds up to a few new pages. Because five minutes a day can trigger or sustain momentum. Because those five minutes might be the best part of your day. Because those five minutes could feel like saving your life.”

20. 16 Random Acts of Kindness That Cost Nothing.

21. Having Fun With Reality. “Street art isn’t just about paint on a wall. The true masters know how to work with the environment—using the sun, shadows, and even the time of day to complete their masterpieces. From shadows that turn into monsters to fountains that glow like lava at sunset, here are 10 incredible artworks that play with reality.”