“If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved.

“A reanimated world is a world in which spirit and matter are not just equally valued but known to be mutually reliant.”

Creating art from an unseen world that influences human health and disease.

At its best, a close relationship is a partnership of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, supported by a network of trust and tenderness. It profoundly changes a person and yet helps them become more authentic as assumptions give way to presence and issues are transformed into open connections. In his slim and remarkable book Twice Alive (public library), poet, geologist, and translator Forrest Gander uses inspiration from the natural world to create a poetic “ecology of intimacies,” honoring lichens’ “extreme frugality in drought” and the “long soft sarongs of moss” as a means “to rediscover the essence of… read article

You are aware that life ends in death and love ends in loss. Still, you see the beautiful afternoon light shining on the face you love, knowing it will soon fade, and the beloved face will also fade someday. But still you love, because life is short but meaningful, and love connects the impossible and the eternal. I ponder this and a part from Louise Erdrich’s 2005 book The Painted Drum (public library) comes to mind: Life will break you. Nobody… read article

The timbre of a violin or a sitar can affect how dissonant music sounds to us.