Robert Irwin is doing a two-night gig at the MFA in Boston. Last night was the first installment of Irwin’s rapid-fire, wisdom-spewing, wait, wait, I can’t write all of this down fast enough, boundary-breaking delivery. With his baseball cap firmly on his head (which, he advised us coyly, was to protect his eyes from direct […]
That Form in the Grass
A Message from the Wanderer Today outside your prison I stand and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen; you have relatives outside. And there are thousands of ways to escape. Years ago I bent my skill to keep my cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies, and shouted my plans to jailers; but […]
Fall Classic
Varigated leaves, Maine 2009 We’re off for a few days in Vermont and Western Massachusetts with our Jack’s Place gang of friends. Jack’s Place is a house in the western corner of Vermont that a group of us are building together. At the helm of this project, emotionally and architecturally, is my favorite pied piper […]
Seeking Some Silence
Damien Hirst with his diamond-encrusted skull. Photograph: HO/Reuters Jonathan Jones writes for the UK-based Guardian, and more often than not I find safe harbor in his point of view. He’s not a complexifier or a critic caught in the po-mo net of obfuscation (my exhaustion with that gamey approach to art is showing, isn’t it?) […]
Dune Dwelling
Sand storm on the Sands of Forvie (Photo: Martyn Gorman) Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this […]
Icons of the Desert
Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi’s “Mystery Sand Mosaic”, 1974 (Photo: Grey Gallery) Ken Johnson of the New York Times recently wrote a review of the show, “Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings From Papunya” currently on view at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. I haven’t seen the show yet but will be down […]
Tidal Flow
In her conversation with Bill Moyers, Buddhist writer and nun Pema Chödrön talks about going into an extended retreat: I felt like I was in Kansas, and Oz was outside the door. You know, it’s like sensory deprivation. But, gradually, what begins to happen is that you sink so deeply into what life has been […]
A Knack for Navigating
Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God, was recently reviewed in the New York Times by Ross Douthat. Armstrong is a prolific writer whose energy to explore, explain and probe the human proclivity to religious belief is enthusiastically optimistic and beguiling expansive. (You can hear and see Armstrong speaking at TED.) As a Christian […]
Flow as a State of Being
Lava flowing into the sea on the Big Island, Hawaii, 1999 My friend Andrew’s weekly Sunday epistles have had a thread running through them over the last few weeks that speaks directly to my current state of mind. Maybe it is just a stage in the growing older business. I have come to think of […]
How Kind Time Is
Thomas Merton in the fields near the Abbey of Gethsemani. (Credit: Sybille Akers) At Thomas Merton’s Grave We can never be with loss too long. Behind the warped door that sticks, the wood thrush calls to the monks, pausing upon the stone crucifix, singing: “I am marvelous alone!” Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield: rows of […]