I practice a form of meditation called Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are. A very ancient form of meditation, it is said to have been rediscovered by the Buddha over 2500 years ago and has been passed down by an unbroken chain of teachers to the present day.
Over the July 4th week, I was thinking a lot about independence, and what that quality can mean to a creative and wholesome life.
Especially for women.
Have you heard of the zero waste movement? The term “zero waste” comes from manufacturing, and the goal of sending zero waste to landfills. Interestingly, at least 20 large-scale US manufacturers had achieved zero waste status as of 2015 — no wonder some of them objected to President Trump pulling out of the Paris Accords! They’re already way ahead of the curve.
Gleaming black olives, dusty purple eggplants, emerald kale, a splash of scarlet tomatoes on freshly made golden corn tortillas… I cook with my eyes. Color matters, texture matters, flavor matters. I rarely use recipes. I find my art supplies at the farmer’s market on Saturday morning, and my favorite season is now, summer, when the market is brimming with seasonal surprises.
We recently went through an especially rough time. My youngest son, who’s recovering from a traumatic brain injury, had a frightening exacerbation of symptoms, in which he began to feel that his brain was swelling, and eventually that his head was going to burst. (This story has a happy ending.) A 6:30am trip to the ER and a CT scan later, we knew that his head wasn’t, in fact, going to burst. But we still didn’t know what was wrong.
Antoine Leiris, You Will Not Have My Hate
On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène, was one of 89 people killed at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, when three men opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd at a rock concert. Three days later, Leiris, a young journalist, wrote an open letter on Facebook addressed to his wife’s killers, proclaiming his refusal to be diminished or to let his 17-month-old son’s life be defined by Hélène’s murder. Perhaps you saw that? This is his subsequent memoir of moral certitude, courage and love — a compass for us in difficult times. Beautiful.
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