Category Archives: Inspirations

“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”

JASMINE by Jane Hirshfield Almost the twenty-first century” — how quickly the thought will grow dated, even quaint. Our hopes, our future, will pass like the hopes and futures of others. And all our anxieties and terrors, nights of sleeplessness, griefs, will appear then as they truly are — Stumbling, delirious bees in the teaContinue reading “Monday’s Muse”

Here’s a list of Big Great Books for your current state of mind: The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu. Likely the first novel, written by a woman around 980 BCE in Japan about the courtlife of a man (clearly in contrast with the women) who is not perfect and in fact very flawed by hisContinue reading “Monday Musings”

“The ceremonies that persist—birthdays, weddings, funerals— focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor,Continue reading “Monday Thoughts”

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is )when what hugs stopping earth than silent is more silent than more than much more is or total sun oceaning than any this tear jumping from each most least eye of star and without was if minus and shall be immeasurable happenless unnow shuts more than openContinue reading “Monday’s Muse”

“As the Christians have their story of a Fall from a prehistoric Eden, the Hindus have a belief that the world travels through four different ages, or yugas. The age we are currently living in is the Kali yuga: a dark age characterised by degeneration and greed. Avarice and a general disrespect for life define the kali yuga: itContinue reading “Monday Thoughts”

It snowed. It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact theContinue reading “Monday Thoughts”