Zen Up, calm down

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Cynthia G.

You know that tight feeling in your gut at the end of the day that begs for release? Or that tension that kicks in right after you wake up, when something big is up and you don’t feel quite ready? Or maybe there are bigger questions looming and you don’t have a handle on how to handle them. As one bright person said to me once, “your best thinking has gotten you this far. Maybe you should try something else.” Yeah, this just might be it. My friend, Becca Pronchick, has published a handbook for meditation called: No Matter the Question, MEDITATION is the Answer. It’s a book for beginners, full of great guided meditations. It’s also a go-to for people who have been meditating a while and need some new tricks to still the mind. Either way, this smart, pretty little book has the potential to calm your heart and mind. In case, you know, it matters.

BUY THE BOOK::CALM YOUR MIND

art + poetry

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Cynthia G.

I can’t get enough of this book! Filled with images from the Ozarks to St. Louis, from Memphis to Venice Beach. Lush and bold, Sandra Giedeman’s prose takes the reader on unexpected journeys across emotional landscapes at once familiar and unexpected. In This Hour is filled with subtle reminders of the depth of small things. How can one who loves language not fall in love will lines like: Ten p.m. is when I think I could go mad in L.A. with a bird feeder and a barbecue outside my window. I wasn’t always like this. One thing I have learned. Everything in life is a metaphor for everything else.

SUPPORT THE ARTS::BUY THE BOOK

sweet sister shoutout

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Cynthia G.

Happy International Women’s Day! Show the amazing women you know, including yourself, a little well-earned appreciation!

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

poetry obsessed

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Cynthia G.

poetic genius

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Cynthia G.

We are so proud of our dear friend, Sandra Sloss Giedeman, on the publication of her collected poems, In This Hour. Kudos also, to her publisher, Green Tara Press, for this demonstration of exceptional good taste!

Support the arts::BUY THE BOOK!

word nerds

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Cynthia G.

We writers are strange ducks. We have an almost obsessive love of language. We dance with verbs and all in love with nouns. Sometimes we use made up words because language is fluid and zesty and delicious. We even love to talk about words because like pictures, worlds can have color and texture and depth and dazzlement.

ask more::fear less

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Cynthia G.

Have you ever noticed that when you actually do that thing you don’t want to do and push through and do it anyway you arrive at a whole new place beyond what you expected? It’s like an scoop of sprinkles from the cosmos just for screwing up courage and pushing beyond limits. Not stopping at go. Not opting for the easy exit strategy. Yeah, I love it when that happens. READ MORE HERE.

grace everywhere

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Cynthia G.

The other night while eating Chinese and reading the winter issue of Ploughshares I discovered Lance Larson and his astonishing “Sad Jar of Atoms.” I tumbled into a rabbit hole of language love that I haven’t felt since my first reading of Louise Erdrich’s Last Report of the Miracles from Little No Horse. This is true love. Deep love. Crush love.

“Life is a jar of maybe, of who knows, whereby we grow older and bones turn brittle as hope. Some jars live along time, like sea turtles, like Benjamin Franklin, a jar of genius filled with Poor Richard and flirting in French. . .”

Lance Larson, poet genius, poet laureate of Utah, I love you. I want to hold your prose babies in my prayerful hands. I am lost in cadence and find myself in a place where words are texture and all sound is a dazzle . . all because of your “Sad Jar of Atoms.”

Thank you for your Byronic reference. Thank you for “a jar made of sizzle and cordite.” Thank you for your “river and the eye of a bird.”

graceful language

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Cynthia G.

Inspiration comes in the most interesting places. Donna Tartt talks about hers, and what it took to write The Goldfinch. Watch the interview here and leave a comment!

new year, new you

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Cynthia G.

There are a million ways to start a new year and we are pleased to say that a killer hike is one of our favorites. Especially the imperfect part. You know: the huffing and puffing to the top of the hill part. We even like the way they turn a painful, albeit beautiful, experience into an object lesson. Read all about it here.