A Mindful Life

Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight among the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate. When I ask what she is doing, she replies, “Composing a life.” She seeks to answer the question, “Is there no place on earth for me?” I ask how she will know the answer, and she [...]

It sits on the nightstand, a spiral-bound stack of deadwood no larger than a cassette tape, clad in magenta, offering one hundred and sixty invitations to commune with myself. A black butterfly clip divides past from present; faint blue lines promise to bring order out of chaos. Paper bits, notions extracted from this moveable brain, [...]

The brain is a three-pound supercomputer. It is the command and control center running your life. It is involved in absolutely everything you do. Your brain determines how you think, how you feel, how you act, and how well you get along with other people. Your brain even determines the kind of person you are. [...]

When we moved to our rented house in California, one reason we liked it was this tree. It’s not in our yard, but it provided shade and beauty. It had been trimmed to avoid the utility wires in the past, but most of the tree was intact. The landlord, however, didn’t like the needles falling [...]

The moon is a cool mint candy that on this blue-hued vernal evening I would like to pluck from the sky and swallow whole.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. –Arthur Schopenhauer

In my garden moves life. A garden snake, pink and pencil thin, skims across gravel, shimmering as it flows. One touch of my finger sends it skating slinky style into a nest under the antique roses. In my garden dwells peace. Roses pursue self-actualization, nodding budded heads in agreement with the wind’s caress. They bloom [...]

Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves. –Marita Golden Likewise, here is a comparison of 100 differences between poetry and prose. [via Bookish]

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor — for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. –Jessamyn West

Words tumble from your mouth, so many happy children rolling down fields at play; vibrant, sonorous, thrilling with energy as they leap and chase each other. Your voice a symphony, a rich honey tenor pouring into me inscribing life on my heart; crescendoing in passionate explanation, now resting, silence drawing me forth into the next [...]