Happy weekend...

Happy Friday! It has been a very busy few weeks, and I've had so much to write about but little time to do so. Currently, we're enjoying Lake Champlain with extended family, and the air is beautiful and even a bit crisp! Here are a few things that I've loved this week:

• Listening (and meditating) to the beautiful 2009 album "East of Eden" by Taken By Trees. 
• Loving this study on how the brain benefits from walking in nature. Green spaces, for the win!
• Vibing hard with this amazing podcast on mindfulness and opening to your life, featuring scientist and zen maestro Jon Kabat-Zinn. 
• And finally, a quote from Alan Watts on learning to live, truly, in the present:

"The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the “I” out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening."

Happy (long) weekend...

Happy early weekend and happy almost birthday, America! I'm looking forward to a few days of family, friends, and floating on a boat in the middle of a big cool lake. Here are a few things that rocked this week:

• Swaying to the breezy throwback of an album finally released by Leon Bridges. 
• Taking my interest in gut bacteria to a whole new level with The Good Gut. My ten-year old science-obsessed self approves. 
• Speaking of gut bacteria, drooling over this recipe for herbed tomatoes, which seems like a  great way to maximize use of the herbs that are growing like weeds on our deck. 
• And finally, a little summer ditty from Carl Sandburg that professes my love for those long lazy summer evenings of lying in the grass, watching fireworks, and being connected to this Earth: 

"Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
                So lazy and hum-strumming"

Happy weekend...

Happy Friday! It has been a wonderful, insightful week of learning and doing. I'm looking forward to a few free days and a trip to my favorite place in the world. Wishing you a breezy summer weekend too. Here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

• Having an OnBeing podcast binge.  A few recommended posts include conversations with yogi and activist Seane Corn, hilarious Jesuit priest James Martin, and chef Dan Barber.
• Loving on my new konjac sponge, which has been really keeping my summer skin clean and my pores nice and tight. 
• Being fascinated by more research into gut bacteria and its impact on mood with this NY Times article "Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain your Mood?" Also running to the fridge to continue my daily sauerkraut habit (I move between a local MA brand and these mixes by Wild Brine). 
• And finally, a lovely poem by Mary Oliver to take us into the weekend:

"Every Day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?"

Happy weekend...

Happy June weekend! It has been a wonderful, fruitful week, and I'm looking forward to loving up my entire extended family this weekend. I hope you have a gorgeous few days as well. Here are a few things that I've been loving lately:

• Throwing back to the nineties amidst a recent Toad the Wet Sprocket kick.
• Loving Outside magazine's article "Man vs. Food" because even though it's a few years old, it still resonates. And because our diet looks eerily similar to that of the author.
• Continuing to meditate on the welcomed new quiet peace in my life with this appropriately timed piece from Pico Iyer on "The Art of Stillness." 
• And finally, a sexy poem from Billy Collins that somehow has always wrapped together many deep vibes and memories I hold from Cape Cod and Newport summers gone by:

"You are not the Mona Lisa
with that relentless look.
Or Venus borne over the froth
of waves on a pink half shell.
Or an odalisque by Delacroix,
veils lapping at your nakedness.
You are more like the sunlight
of Edward Hopper,
especially when it slants
against the eastern side
of a white clipboard house
in the early hours of morning,
with no figure standing
at a window in a violet bathrobe,
just the sunlight,
the columns of the front porch
and the long shadows
they throw down
upon the dark green lawn, baby."

Weekly Words: "Keeping Quiet"

"Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go."

-  Pablo Neruda

Happy Weekend...

Happy summer Friday! It has been a wonderful, soul-nourishing week kicking off the next chapter of my career, and I'm thrilled. Here's to a sunny weekend of time spent outdoors, picnics, bare feet grounded to the earth, and fresh air vibrating through our bodies. Here are a few things that piqued my interest this week:

• Letting a little classic Afrobeat and Rock groove me into the weekend. 
• Reading up on Esther Gokhale and the Gokhale Method of posture, and getting some tips on how to properly stand, as my new organization uses standing desks (!!!). Did you know just how much your posture affects your overall health? Learn more about standing tall with her book "8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back."
• After we spent one solid and restorative night of doing completely nothing this week (no television, no music, no lights, even! Just being together, as the soft breeze came through the windows and the sun set) I totally support this concept of "Slow Parenting" discussed in the Globe a few weeks ago. Even without children, there is strength in truly disconnecting, slowing down, and practicing the art of noticing with our partners and friends.
• And finally, a favorite romantic poem from Stanley Kunitz, "Route Six," that has me jonesing for a trip to the Cape this weekend. I can almost see the Orleans rotary now...

"The city squats on my back.
I am heart-sore, stiff-necked,
exasperated. That's why
I slammed the door,
that's why I tell you now,
in every house of marriage
there's room for an interpreter.
Let's jump into the car, honey,
and head straight for the Cape,
where the cock on our housetop crows
that the weather's fair,
and my garden waits for me
to coax it into bloom.
As for those passions left
that flare past understanding,
like bundles of dead letters
out of our previous lives
that amaze us with their fevers,
we can stow them in the rear
along with ziggurats of luggage
and Celia, our transcendental cat,
past-mistress of all languages,
including Hottentot and silence.
We'll drive non-stop till dawn,
and if I grow sleepy at the wheel,
you'll keep me awake by singing 
in your bravura Chicago style
Ruth Etting's smoky song,
'Love Me or Leave Me,'
belting out the choices.

Light glazes the eastern sky.
Celia gyrates upward
like a performing seal,
her glistening nostrils aquiver
to sniff the brine-spiked air.
The last stretch toward home!
Twenty summers roll by."

Weekly Words: Discovering the True Wonder of You

"What may be is always potential for discovery. It's never too late. This knowledge should give man his greatest challenge - the pursuit of self - his own personal Odessey; discovering his rooms and putting them in order. It should challenge him not only to be a good person, a loving person, a feeling person, an intelligent person, but the best, most loving, feeling, intelligent person he is capable of. His search is not in competition with anyone else's. He becomes his own personal challenge.

Loving yourself involves the discovery of the true wonder of you; not only the present you, but the many possibilities of you. It involves the continual realization that you are unique, like no other person in the world, that life is, or should be, the discovery, the development and the sharing of this uniqueness. The process is not always easy, for one is bound to find those who will feel threatened by a changing, growing you. But it will always  be exciting, always be fresh and like all things new and changing, never be dull. The trip into oneself is the grandest, most enjoyable and longest lasting. The fare is cheap; it merely involves continual experiencing, evaluating, educating, trying out new behavior. Only you can be the final judge in determining what is right for you."

- Leo Buscaglia

Happy weekend...

Happy sunny Friday! This has been some week. Today is my last day of work with my current company, and I'm thrilled to be taking on a new challenge starting after Memorial Day! As Stanley Kunitz says in his famous poem "The Layers," "No doubt the next chapter / in my book of transformations / is already written. / I am not done with my changes." The next few days will be all about celebrating. I hope you have a glorious weekend!

• Listening to classic Beach Boys albums "Pet Sounds" in honor of the summer-like weather we've been having here in the Northeast. The record was released in May nearly fifty years ago.
• Adding these brilliant Chia seed packets to my daily smoothies for an extra hydrating and Omega-packed punch... all while preventing the typical scatter of tiny beads all over the countertop. Genius, really.
• Feeling mesmerized by Korean artist Kwangho Lee's exhibition entitled "Touch," which is comprised of the most lush looking cacti (an oxymoron, if I ever saw one) you've ever wanted to caress. Nature is amazing.
• And finally, a gorgeous poem on transformation from Rilke, that speaks volumes to finding purpose and peace in our ends and beginnings:

"Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind."