May 2025 - Improvised Life
a treasury of inspiring ideas| Improvised Life
As we navigate this wild and very dark time, we find ourselves finding wisdom in unexpected sources. Here are two that have given us a feeling of expansion and re-orientation.| Improvised Life
We think a lot about ways to see the everyday with fresh eyes. It has been an essential theme of Improvised Life for many years. We find Rachel Carson’s simple, powerful question helpful: What if I knew I would never see it again? The awareness of possible loss and disappearance focuses our attention on what…| Improvised Life
We were thrilled to find a message in our Inbox recently with the subject 'Lucky Bedskirt'. It references a post published here in 2016 about how to make a bed skirt out of Ikea's classic Merete curtains; It's one of the many practical improvisations we featured a lot in the old days that are still resonating like crazy.| Improvised Life
Although we've walked many, and have made a few ourselves, we only recently heard the expression 'desire paths' to describe unplanned trails created by human desire. It got us thinking about about what is really at play in their making...| Improvised Life
As we were leaving our local library, an unassuming looking book on display jumped into our hands: Lenapehoking: An Anthology, a reference to the the native American Lenape homeland on which our own home — all of New York City — is built. In it, we found this remarkable passage on seeds...| Improvised Life
I caught the passion for ramps over 40 years ago at my first West Virginia Ramp Supper whose menu was laced with bacon and cornbread. For decades, I’d travel down there to get a transformative blast of ramps, both raw and cooked. Although I've cooked ramps in all sorts of ways, my go to method for using them in all sorts of preparations is Italian-style, braised in olive oil.| Improvised Life
Recently, I went to the Museum of Modern Art to see a single painting, a practice I learned long ago from my father. (Though to look at just one work is also the practice of a centuries-old secret society.) For me, it was a way to revel in the perfection of an Agnes Martin painting, even as Martin's words described the experience, in art and in life.| Improvised Life
At the end of cherry blossom season, as the petals were falling to the ground like pink snow, we found the perfect haiku written 300 years ago by the great poet Issa. We found the gist applies to way more than cherry blossom season...| Improvised Life
Forced by a virus to endure a long convalescence in bed, it was impossible for Elisabeth Tova Bailey to imagine a future; “All of life was out of reach.” Only it wasn't. A forest snail that took up residence on her nightstand, living in a pot of violets, would change her life and become the impetus for a remarkable book.| Improvised Life
In our long life, we've learned a great deal about New Years resolutions from abandoning them so many times that we finally got with the fact that they generally didn't work. We relate mightily to this wise, funny little video we found in Instagram...| Improvised Life
Over the years, we've written about many forms of improvised "guest books", i.e. ways to memorialize the visits of friends. Cecil Beaton tattooed a bathroom’s walls with the handprints of friends, displaying humanity’s most essential signature…| Improvised Life
We’ve stumbled on a few things recently that mightily deepened our view of the Christmas trees that are everywhere now, including a remarkable video of the birth of a pine tree and haiku written hundreds of years ago: Our improvised holiday card to you…| Improvised Life
Lately, we've been hearing about glimmers, tiny moments of awe and beauty that spark joy, calm, well-being and help our nervous systems feel relaxed and balanced (the opposite of stressors and triggers.) Glimmers can be the seemingly ordinary things, as well as very unexpected ones.| Improvised Life
We've never read a more perfect description of foraging for wild mushrooms or for ideas than this from John Cage. It's from the sublime John Cage: A Mycological Foray.| Improvised Life
