A personal compendium of the pleasures and uses for rocks and stones, with John Cage and Mary Oliver…
Read MoreA Practice of Letting Go of Obsessive Thoughts You Can Do Anywhere (John Cage + Huang Po)
There are twenty-one post-it notes in my copy of Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists: each an illuminating and useful tool. Here is a favorite.
Read MoreHome is Your Canvas, Finger Paint It
Watch this slideshow by photographer Margaret Courtney-Clarke and imagine yourself painting your walls, floors, houses, textiles with your fingers…
Read MoreThe Wisdom of Roughneck Buddhas
When Bo Diddley shouted “This monkey is tied, now let’s skin it!” Stephen Asma got his first lesson in the art of improvisation. Here’s what he learned from “roughneck Buddhas”…
Read MoreHunger-Crazed Cooks Confess 50 Ways to Eat Eggs
When there is nothing in the pantry, there is almost always the egg. Here are 50 ways to cook them from hunger crazed food people and Leite’s Culinaria. Just to spark you imagination.
Read MoreThis Enters Through the Brain’s Back Door To Make You More Creative
Our reason for mixing poetry into articles about very practical matters is done with fierce intention: Poetry enters through our brain’s back door and shakes things up. We find that it helps greatly in envisioning possibilities…
Read MoreHow (and Why) to Salt Sensually, like Salt Bae
Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe became a surprising meme when his flamboyant technique of salting meat went viral. Though many are transfixed by his rather, er sensual handling of meat, I love that he put SALTING on the map.
Read MoreYoko Ono on Arguing or Fighting
After a recent, heart-rending, reverberating argument with a friend (everybody was RIGHT, everybody was WRONG), we wondered if the approaches Yoko Ono outlined in Acorn would have been better ways to go.
Read MoreDavid Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness w Recipes
For anyone wondering how an inspired chef thinks or how to think like one, David Chang’s The Unified Theory of Deliciousness in Wired is a must-read. Chang seeks to unearth the underlying base patterns that people respond to in a truly great dish, including the perfect level of salt.
Read MoreLiving is a Martial Art (Bruce Lee)
Legendary martial artist Bruce Lee always carried a small notebook in which he wrote down quotes, affirmations, appearances, poetry, philosophical ideas and his personal practices for training his mind and spirit NOT just his physical skill. Take a look.
Read MoreHerbie Hancock: Miles Davis’ Essential Lesson on Mistakes
(Video link here.) One short minute of perfection: Herbie Hancock recounts the BIG life lesson he got by example from Miles Davis, when Hancock played what he thought was a seriously WRONG note during a gorgeous riff.
Read MoreA Pile of Stones Shows the Way (Mary Oliver)
We opened Blue Horses to this poem and envisioned stones, trees, clouds as we pondered Mary Oliver’s questions, and took in her transforming view of the ordinary things around us.
Read MoreThe Secret Treasure Within ‘Lab Girl’
We abandoned the autobiographical portion of Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl at page 35 to skip through to the short chapters interspersed within in it. They comprise 50 or so pages of superb writing about the secret life of plants that provide hopeful metaphors for our own very human lives. Here are some favorites.
Read MoreHammocks for Healing, Indoors or Out
When a friend told me about research showing that gentle rocking can help heal nervous system, emotional and cognitive imbalances, I decided to install a hammock in my NYC space and test rocking out on myself.
I dove headlong into hammock investigations. Here’s what you need to know to hang a hammock inside or out.
Poetry Vending Machine DIY, with Mary Oliver, Rumi, Anne Sexton
As kids we loved old-fashioned vending machines that would drop a little plastic container holding a treasure — a ring, miniature toy, or candy — through the shoot when we put in a dime or a quarter. Lately, various iterations of poetry vending machines have been coming to our attention, perfect for our adult selves. Imagine…
Read MoreMorning Rituals from GoGo, Patti Smith, Rumi
We learned the hard way that how we used that first half hour or so that it can set the tone for the whole day. So we’re interested in how people we admire start their day. Mira Keras starts the day with her little girl GoGo making music with whatever is around. Pot lids and pineapples are…
Read MoreDIY Magic Carpets
It’s curious how themes appear in our lives. We find a kernel of one and start thinking about it…and before we know it, we begin to find evidence of it in the most unlikely places. So it happened with Mo Khan’s charming vine of a diy magic carpet with power to transport. (It’s the only really good…
Read MoreOur Wild Carvel Cake Time-Lapse Adventure
A video posted by @signlaboratory on Jan 22, 2016 at 10:59am PST A lot of wild things go on in the Laboratory as we play with materials and hatch plots, then follow the trails of ideas that are defined by unexpected constraints and glitches. Witness our groovy, strange 15-second instagram time-lapse video that started with…
Read MoreWhen Doing a Geographic Renews and Enlivens
Current self-help wisdom asserts that ‘doing a geographic’ to solve your life dilemmas is a Very Bad Move. Blowing Dodge is no answer, they say. Well, I suggest common wisdom could be dead wrong.
Read MoreWhy The Glass is Always Totally Full
In response to A New View of Losing Years of Work, a reader named Ann sent us this perfect cartoon and commentary: I’m not sure this link* will take you to the place I intend. I want to link you to the cartoon that shows a man tied to a chair while masked men steal…
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