Lakes and oceans talk to us in a language we don't understand with our cognition, but with our bodies. To be more specific, with our very cells. You might say it is the soothing language of negative ions. Here, try it ...
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A few thoughts on unfinished books and ancient wine vats
What does it take to get a book into the world? A little help from St. Joseph the Worker, plus inspiration from an Old World wine vat on a steep Calabrian hillside. That's a good start.
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NOTATIONS: ‘Tick-tick-tick …’
This quarter-century-old guestbook notation, scribbled and illustrated one cold February day on the grounds of a Buddhist monastery in the West Virginia hills, remains true, after all these years.
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Looking Down on Paris, 30 years gone
Exiting the spartan, Napoleonic era apartment building I have sort of broken into, I head for the highest hill in Paris. I am intent on seeing what I can see this Christmas Eve in Paris, 1986, while my Moroccan fellow traveler snores toward Christmas Day, as we take a break from helping build a Buddhist temple in a Parisian suburb.
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Holy Ghosts and Scapulars
I came upon one of my mother’s old rosaries in my collection of family stuff, and paired it on a tack beside my writing desk wall with some old religious medallions I earned on some long-ago Holy Day. Catholicism didn't take, but the accoutrements remain.
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One key to rule them all
Much of my life and existence, my world view and how I spend my time, plus how I orient myself in the space-time continuum of ongoing mystery and confounding confusion, is summed up in this photograph.
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Dear General de Gaulle …
The email arrived one day recently in my in-box from Glasgow, Scotland: Did you know, it said, that a letter your friend Sister Mary Pellicane sent to Charles de Gaulle is on sale on eBay in London? Um ... no. What?
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The Art of the Song Lyric
The hand-transcribed song lyric considered as a work of art. Bouncing around Paris and the volcanic heartland of Gaul before easy access to printers and scanners, you had to make do when you wanted to travel with lyrics to the songs you hoped to sing.
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It’s an altar boy thing
Let's not talk about the moon anymore, but instead Solzhenitsyn's idea of 'political horror,' how to write a 'sorta memoir,' and breaking up with Twitter until the perp walk.
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“When ‘Frankenstein’ Came to Town”
“Listen to this!” say Tommy. He shifts the Les Paul to his lower back, rock star-like. “Edgar Winter,” he says, almost reverently. “Johnny’s brother ..."
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“Stormtroopers & Grandmas”
The balls of his black pupils stare at me intently, oddly echoed by the round marble of a self-shaved head. Moments later, I have second thoughts about my diplomacy as “Speak English or Die” batters the room.
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‘What Does the Past Look Like?’
A more Catholic grade school name you could / not conjure — Our Lady of the Rosary. Where, on a / bright Saturday afternoon, I'm surprised to find / an orange traffic cone propping open a first-floor / door. And so, as one will do when invited by the / cosmos to stroll the hallways where you once / walked a half-century gone, I walk in.
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‘I can see clearly now’
I had to get out of town. Get lost, evade the race of human beings. Seek out geese and turtles, beavers and blue herons. Gunned the car 50 miles per hour, 70, 80. Slowed to make the left turn. Parked on white gravel near the trail head. The way forward was barred by a long rusted gate, hinged and anchored to a chest-high concrete post. Only footfalls allowed hereafter.
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‘WHAT IF YOU KNEW HER?’: The Protest 7 Years after Kent State
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, in which four students were gunned down on May 4, 1970. As a student journalist, I profiled a protest seven years later on the Kent campus, where the memories remained raw and more than a thousand converged to protest.
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The Christmas People Put this Hat On Me
The Christmas People put this hat on me. A bright red hat with thick white fur. And a big ball that blocks one eye. So it begins.
