Joy lies beyond where disappointment hides…

The will to control is a hard habit to break. It finds places to hide away, working in secret. This shouldn’t be surprising, it is magical thinking after all! One place where I’ve found it hiding has been in an inclination to carry a grim cast of mind, a perpetually pessimistic outlook that seeks to

Joyful Disillusionment

This last weekend was the WoodenBoat Show held at Mystic Seaport. This luckily is within an hour’s drive for me and by saving up it’s manageable to attend for the three days – with the help of a generously offered Press Pass. I’ll be writing about the experience on Boats for Difficult Times, but I

When we mistake fun for joy

Putting on a blind fold and stepping into traffic will cause anyone an emotional toll as they struggle to pit capricious will against self-preservation. Still, in response to the immediacy of the peril – no matter that it’s self-inflicted – we feel an adrenaline rush. To the numbed psyche this is as close to feeling alive as we can get. No surprise that manufactured risk-taking is such big business.

Too Much, too little

I keep running into a single question whenever I consider what might be done. I must admit the question is holographic, its form mirrors its content. It is at once achingly simple and bewilderingly complex. Evidence of its necessity surrounds us and at the same time this question never seems to arise. It’s a question

The Primacy of Attention

Fear makes you stupid. Fear swamps intelligence. Fear takes us out of Being. We resort to strategies in an effort to re-establish certainty. Fear drives us to reject what-is in favor of any expedient that feels as if it will deflate our fear. We lose track of whatever may have initiated fear, whether an actual

Realms. How we position.

“How we position.” Seems to call for an object, “What?” before we can get into wondering about “how;” or even, who “we” are; we want to know what.

Imagine we had a compass…

This thought experiment came to me while out sailing with a friend. What if we discovered that our boat has a compass? What if we had no idea what it was, or how it worked? There it sat. And, at times we would notice certain apparent coincidences. Certain alignments with other things we were familiar

There Is a Gulf Between Foraging and Mining

There is a gulf between two attitudes and ways of working that can be described by looking at the distance between foraging and mining. When we forage we gather what we need. We also limit our effort. If a spot is too resistant to our efforts; if what we’re after is scarce; we move on.

Out of the Depth of Our Numbness

Once we begin to recognize what it feels like to be alive it can still be a shock to acknowledge how much of our lives is spent in circumstances that are dead and threaten to engulf us once again in the numbness we’ve just begun to leave behind. But, if we fail to let this

The Space We Need

Art school was where I learned that success was a trap. How limited my teachers were. Experts. Hemmed in by reduction. It would take thirty-five years for this to sink in. Not surprising if you consider the trajectory of the intervening decades, beginning with the height of their positions at the time. The accumulated authority

George Michelsen Foy’s Finding North

Is disaster… always envisioned geographically, is it always navigational in the deepest sense? Finding North, page 22 George Michelsen Foy asks this question early on in his extended ruminations in the form of a record, a log of a voyage. We join him on a quest woven of varied lineaments gathered over decades, facing questions ranging

Security & Well-being

It’s a common expression. We consider the two must go together, “How can we feel good if we’re not secure?” Here’s John‘s recent comment on An Exploration, Navigating Without a Map: Tony, I have read and re-read your original posting, and I think I have a better grip on where you are going with it.