is out on a limb. This was advice I cut out of a magazine many years ago. Yesterday, I spoke to a good friend in California, the same age as me, who after 19 years left her career and is taking the summer off to re-evaluate her life. We had a great heart to heart on aging, on work, on money, and relationships. Some of the best quotes from her were these and are very…
I was listening to Ram Das yesterday as I was walking and he was speaking about all of the ways one might meditate and one suggestion he had was to open a book to any page and take a passage and try to live that day from within the framework of that passage. So today I took Walt Whitman and opened to this passage and will try to adhere to the tenets that dying is…
I was sitting in the apartment in Zahara de los Atunes and Tatjana had grabbed Ana’s El Pais to read about the tragedy in Oslo. I refused to read about because it was just too horrible, but then my eyes riveted down the front page to something that left me infinitely sadder than sad: La cantante Amy Winehouse, de 27 años, ha sido encontrada muerta esta tarde en su casa de Camden Town, al norte…
I was trying to get my meditation practice in order and decided that I’m going back to my hula hoop for serenity. If you are a person of action, then stillness isn’t satisfying. But the graceful twirl of the hula hoop and a wonderful mantra or song playing is a good way for me to center myself in the now. I left off my hula habit when Tin came along, opting for time with him…
It seems as if I have spent an inordinate amount of time putting other people’s agenda before my own. I have come to the realization that no one is going to stand up for my agenda except me, so stand tall. I’m going to cultivate a life and work that serves me instead of vice versa. After all I am not the cart, I am the bull.
When we returned from Spain and got a phone call from the now head mistress of New Orleans Montessori, I used my gut to guide me and this is what my gut said, 1) Ms. Albers isn’t there? (she retired July 31st) – why was no transition plan outlined to parents? 2) lead paint on the building next door is causing a crisis that requires moving asap (this sounds like an over reaction – head…
Levine was named as poet laureate for the US and in an article in the NYT an excerpt from one of his poems reveals why: Can you taste what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious, it stays in the back of your throat like a truth you never uttered because the time was always wrong … I love the silence he…
A friend just sent me photographs of us from a recent trip. Why do I look thinner in her photos – I need to change cameras – really!
A therapist told me several times to get my sense of urgency in check, but I told her, I have a job that requires urgency, I have things that have to be done if not by me, then by who, and I have a life I am trying to grab by the horns and live as much as I can so everything appears urgent to me. Exactly, she said. A long time friend of mine…
There was an interesting article in the New York Times about a woman who came across her ex’s blog and she was so drawn to reading about him that she found it addicting. Then the blog went down after the blogger had made some remarks he regretted. I wrote a fellow blogger about whether he might ever think of shutting it down and another friend who writes a blog to see if she would either…