Category Archives: Inspirations

Despite its so-called progress, our modern society tends to look back to a simpler time, even though pioneer days were probably harder and more isolated than life today. This yearning isn’t nostalgia, which is a longing for an airbrushed memory. It is a genuine subconscious draw to knowledge that has been obscured by innovation, progress,Continue reading “Monday Musings”

Before Summer Rain ~ Rainer Maria Rilke Suddenly, from all the green around you, something-you don’t know what-has disappeared; you feel it creeping closer to the window, in total silence. From the nearby wood you hear the urgent whistling of a plover, reminding you of someone’s Saint Jerome: so much solitude and passion come fromContinue reading “Monday’s Muse”

Respiration BY JAMAAL MAY A lot of it lives in the trachea, you know. But not so much that you won’t need more muscle: the diaphragm, a fist clenching at the bottom. Inhale. So many of us are breathless, you know, like me kneeling to collect the pottery shards of a house plant my elbowContinue reading “Monday Musings”

“…change is possible…and people can do it, also…people can change themselves…I sometimes feel very sad because the people who have had the power to do so have been incredibly destructive to all of us and to the planet. But I’ve never lost faith in the people who didn’t have that kind of power, who didn’tContinue reading “Monday Musings”

Spring in New England is a lovely thing – the anticipation of color back into our lives keeps our visual acuity sharp in any subtle changes. The tiniest of buds, the unfolding of leaves, the precociousness of blooms…in the woods, they hide – facing down, or shadowy amongst curled leaflets and grey-brown litter, in theContinue reading “Monday’s Flower Muses”

For those of you with Spotify, this is the ever changing but current Monday mix that makes the seedlings grow, the bread rise, the kimchi ferment, the pickles brine, the crochet hook knot, and the words flow: Happy Monday

“I have a couple of words to describe farmers: innovative and generous. Plus they are absurdly nice – and kind. They are innovative as seed growers and they are so generous with that knowledge, sharing those innovations with the broader farming community. They are very much like nature, like seeds. We all know that ifContinue reading “Monday’s Muse”

Dreams, memories, the sacred–they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at aContinue reading “Musings”

“At the end of the first month of spring, the yang ethers of heaven are said to waft down while the yin ethers of earth rise. They commingled harmoniously, and as a result grasses and trees begin to sprout. Later (or earlier since the seasons are cyclical), at the end of the first month ofContinue reading “Monday Musings”

I’m struggling with inspirational thinkings today – it doesn’t help that the weather here at Rock Bottom is very uninspiring – some sort of snow/rain/sleet is dropping in straight sheets from the sky and bouncing off the front steps. The sky the kind of grey that isn’t going to let up any time soon. ThereContinue reading “Monday Musings”