post
post

Mary Oliver: Taking Yes for an Answer

Mary Oliver’s Morning Poem starts our week with the recognition that it can be challenging to embrace even the simplest aspects of life that we ALL deserve.  If we look around, we find that the goods were delivered despite our best efforts at self-sabotage. Brene Brown described it:

Read More
post

John Cage: Saying YES to Unpredictability

We opened the John Cage’s enduringly great A Year from Monday and found this extraordinary set of questions*: How immediately are you going to say Yes to no matter what unpredictability, even when what happens seems to have no relation to what one thought was one’s commitment? The kind of YES he’s talking about is full committment:

Read More
post

The Practice of Seeing Through New Eyes (Proust + LSD)

This quote reminded us of a stunning video of a 1950’s housewife who took part in an early LSD experiment. As the drug takes hold, she glories in the colors she sees and says “Everything is one. Can’t you see it?” Without taking LSD, we find there is still a great deal of unexpected beauty to see IF we practice noticing what’s around us.

Read More
post

how to use fabric to disappear eyesores and clutter

I frequently do Skype consultations with people who need clever, inexpensive fixes for their spaces and are having difficulty envisioning possibilities. Often, they are only able to describe the change in feeling that they’d like to achieve. In the many spaces I’ve looked at, I’ve seen a common problem: there is a lot of visual…

Read More
post

wood coffee table with ‘yes’ + other signage furniture

We first posted  furniture designer Roxane Beis‘ work last march after we stumbled on her unique stenciled tree trunk side tables whose splits and cracks were vividly painted red. Only we didn’t know whom to credit. When a reader sent us an email with a link to Beis’s site, we discovered a trove of interesting furniture, like…

Read More
post

‘yes to all’

It’s amazing how good this sign makes us feel. via uncopy Related posts: ‘yes yes yes yes…oh..oh…oh.. yes yes’ (nora ephron) what happens if you say ‘yes, and…’ (instead of ‘no’)? salvador dali says ‘yes’ to everything ‘there is no such word as “no”‘

Read More
post

‘yes yes yes yes…oh..oh…oh.. yes yes’ (nora ephron)

We didin’t realize how much Meg Ryan’s soliloquy from Nora Ephron’s “When Harry Met Sally”  is the epitomy of YES, JOY, BEING IN THE MOMENT until we saw artist Rachel Perry Welty‘s wonderful sign. Using letters cut from Ephron’s obituary, she transformed a sad passing into a its much bigger view. via The New York Times’…

Read More
post

what happens if you say ‘yes, and…’ (instead of ‘no’)?

After Scott McDowell attended a class in theatrical improvising with Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, he faced a quandery: how to reconcile a basic tenet of productivity – saying “No” and setting limits – with the essential principle of improvising – saying “Yes, and…”. “Yes, and” is a protocol that allows for anything to happen,…

Read More
post

salvador dali says ‘yes’ to everything

(Video link here) We are totally charmed by this video of Salvador Dali on an episode of What’s My Line, an old tv game show in which blindfolded contestants had to guess the occupation of the special guest by asking yes/no questions. Here are all of the questions that Dali answered yes to (we’ve boldfaced ones that…

Read More