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Happiness
Photography
What They Taught Me
I am compelled to leave every few months with my backpack and cameras and a ticket to some distant place. I travel as simply as I can, with a tent, a sleeping bag, some cooking gear, and small gifts to give to people I befriend along the way. I am drawn in particular to the indigenous peoples of the world and their vanishing customs. They have taught me groundedness, humility, wisdom, and authenticity.
August 2008
Quotations
Sunbeams
December 2006On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
Poetry
Infant Pneumonia
She wouldn’t suck. She wouldn’t cuddle. / Her eyes rolled toward me, then away again. / I hugged her to my chest and ran / from the doctor’s office to the X-ray lab.
December 2006Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Marriage Bed
You will have to take my word on this: we loved each other. We were married to other people, we fell in love, and finally we were together and then married, for thirty years. We both expected Bill to die first; I was twenty-seven years old and he was fifty-four when we met, and through all of those years, even from the beginning, I told myself that I could live with his absence because our love would carry me the way a wave carries the light of the sun.
August 2006
Poetry
Prayer In The Strip Mall, Bangor, Maine
The week after Thanksgiving and the stores are decked out / for holiday shopping, including a T.J. Maxx, where what was / once too expensive loses its value and attracts us
January 2006Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Secrets of Pronoia
How The World Is Conspiring To Shower You With Blessings
Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It’s the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a means of training your senses and intellect so that you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
November 2005Quotations
Sunbeams
October 2005If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
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