Our Lives Are Shaped by the Quality of Our Attention
Drop your compulsions. Don’t wait. Act like you have all the time in the world while you just might still….
Put that time before what matters.
Put your effort into patience and stamina.
Develop one confidence: That you will suspend your desire for conclusions.
Continue reading “To those younger…”I’m just back from two weeks working with Jeppe Graugaard in Denmark. This recording is the first of a three-part series of conversations resulting from our time together.
Continue reading “Conversations with Jeppe Graugaard, Part I, Practice”
However we approach our predicament we face a myriad of traps, evasions, and projections. It’s no different when we come to an opportunity to act within a practice. Except it is….
In a practice we interact with complexity outside the confusing complications that abound in our customary, conditioned state. Living inside our reactions it is difficult to see past the drama. After all, as we flail about we glimpse consequences, fatal consequences. This ramps up our fears and make us more brittle and unyielding. Hardly conducive to arriving at a breakthrough.
Within a practice we must still confront our reactions. The drama this unleashes can be intense. But, if we….
Continue reading “Drawing Desire”
My thoughts have been circling around what may best be described as questions of purpose. This might be considered central to any life led with some degree of introspection. As with most things of value this pursuit has been short-changed by our culture’s dominant modus operandi. It’s taken quite a while to sort this out.
Not that it is sorted now; but certain features are coming into focus. I’ve known for a long time that working creatively in isolation is a frustrating business. It’s also an incomplete business. While a certain and even a prolonged apprenticeship may be required; until what we do has connected with others; it is not quite complete. We have not quite done what needs to be done. Doing what needs to be done is a definition of Purpose, Isn’t it? So we come full-circle.
That my calling has had so many seemingly disparate elements has not only confused others. It has confused me. Sorting out how the parts are to fit together – an activity central to all art, craft, to the workings of communion – has been a central focus in all I’ve done. A qualification, I guess, to tackle this job!
My work is on the cusp of a new phase. I can feel a fledging taking place. A plumage developing. A new competence. Not the confidence of tackling a familiar task; but a confidence that comes when we feel ready to do what we have not done before.
Continue reading “A Question of Purpose”A gallery of images from this year’s WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport.Continue reading “WoodenBoat Show, 2014”
As a returning visitor to this site I hope you enjoy the changes you’ll find here.
As a first time visitor, welcome!
It seems fitting at this time of year to share these photos taken while sailing on the Shallop replica for the Mayflower II.
I was fortunate to join them on a late-season sail from Duxbury back to Plymouth.
Continue reading “Sailing the Shallop”
Just coming out of my virtual darkroom after attending The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport last weekend.Continue reading “WoodenBoat Show, 2013”
Cover Illustration by Rima Staines
The Dark Mountain 2 anthology is out! Follow the link to the announcement on their site.
I’m deeply honored to have a chapter from my novel, Shoal Hope included along with this incredible list of poets, writers, and thinkers.
Naomi Klein, David Abram, Vinay Gupta, Paul Kingsnorth, Glyn Hughes, Luanne Armstrong, Charles Hugh Smith, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, Venkatesh Rao, Warren Draper, Darren Allen, Catherine Lupton, Tom Keyes, Jay Griffiths, Melanie Challenger, Nick Hunt, William Haas, Simon Lys, Albert Pierce Bales, Antony Lioi, Em Strang, Joel Moore, Mario Petrucci, Adrienne Odasso, Robert Walker, Benjamin Morris, Stephen Wheeler, Andrea Dulberger, Heathcote Williams, Gerry Loose, and Dougald Hine.
My apologies to anyone whose web presence I’ve garbled.
Please set me straight if you can, along with links for the ones I couldn’t find.
Reading Seth Godin’s latest micro-blog this morning. He posts one a day. Most of the time they are at least tangentially thought provoking. Often they’re more than that.
I’ve written about Seth before, my post, Enormity on Horizons of Significance began as a response to one.
Brainwashed! is a gem of the art of the Keynote, Short, sweet, to the point.
On this site, I’m including other work, excerpts from longer fiction, poetry, and an archive of paintings, photos and designs.
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