“Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in.” — Vera Nazarian … More Promise
It is tempting to believe, once the year is ended, once the page is turned, that we will move on to a new and more ordered life—and it will be different. For a while, you might think so. * * * New Year’s Promise — Photo and poem by Mary O’Connor. Poem reprinted … More New Year’s Promise
Poet by nature and street photographer by perspective, author Jennifer Payne turns to the curious thematic image of a flosser to make an arresting statement in her new book about our world and about how, in so many ways, we influence its being. The thought of marrying a cast-off dental apparatus with such discordant thoughts … More Evidence … New Book Review
“The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale…” — Vera Nazarian Store windows decorated for the holidays are annual highlights of New York City’s retailers. Saks Fifth Avenue chose this year to bring the Grimm Brothers’ tale of Snow White … More Fantasia
for all Route 91 Harvest Festival victims they were holding hands they were dancing they were singing when the shots rang out Get down! Oh, God! it happened so fast all within seconds I can’t feel my legs I never left her side I love you, Laurie. I … More Pieces of Las Vegas
Just to look─ to look at the sea, to follow its comings and goings, is to see beyond memory, beyond life, before and after the beginning of death. Just to think─ to think about the sea, to ponder its waves, is to find there is more, more than souls can account for, than every … More That Is Enough
“We “go to wilderness to remove ourselves from the human saturation in our lives, not see mementos from other people’s lives.” — Robyn Martin Cairns, or carefully stacked stones, have been around for centuries, a practice with a purpose ranging from remembrance of the dead to spiritual offering to trail heads. Yet today’s modern day … More Already Perfect
“When despair for the world grows in me…I go and lie down where…the great heron feeds, I come into the peace of wild things….” Listen here to Wendell Berry read the complete The Peace of Wild Things as published in Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems © Counterpoint, 3/26/2013. * * * Great Blue Heron, watercolor painting … More Peace
It was a day when the ocean lay still, merging its salty wetness with the dank side of the sky and the air was thick with fish, so thick that you could see them—in full color, I might add—darting and turning through the edges of waves before losing their way in the deep. There were … More Counting fish
“If you want to experience joy, stop, slow down, and begin to pay attention to what you taste and smell when you’re making breakfast, when you’re in a restaurant, when you’re having wine, when you’re outside and it’s the beginning of spring and you can smell the earth getting soft under your feet. Pay attention … More Flavor
Life Is Full of Sweet Spots 