Mark Twain

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can 'show off' and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our own untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off. All our passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the end in view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.

I am 70; 70, and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier No. 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.

-Mark Twain

Tiny Rooms

I think I had spent up my available capital for extroversion in college, and I had to be by myself. I intended to take one year, but ended up taking four. At the start I lived in a small cabin in northern Minnesota through fall and winter. I lived by shooting partridge illegally; I wanted to write like Milton. The next year, the summer of 1951, I moved to New York, where I lived for three more years, excessively alone. “Altarwise by owl light in the halfway house,” as Dylan Thomas put it.

I lived in tiny rooms—the better ones had a hot plate—and was determined to write twelve hours a day at least six days a week. And did. To support myself I worked one day a week, as a file clerk or a typist and, for a while, a painter, carrying around my painter’s bag with the coveralls. When one is living what the French call the garret life, it’s surprising how often one meets someone with the odd instinct to help.

-Robert Bly, Paris Review

Robert Bly

Paris Review:

William Carlos Williams was the one who meant the most to me, so I hitchhiked to see him, from Cambridge to Paterson, wearing my chino pants, and I called him from a bar nearby: Could I come to see you?—Sure, come on, kid. So he let me in and said, Sit down over there. Do you write poetry?—Well, yeah, I guess so . . . I suppose. He went about his business, planning his deliveries and typing something. He glanced at me from time to time. After fifteen minutes or so, he said, OK, kid, you can go now. He understood that I just wanted to look at him. I drifted out, floating along the street. It was heavenly.

36th Anniversary

Today is my thirty-six year anniversary of running away from my parents' Larchmont NY home the Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend 1978. That night I called my friend Jessica Brown who was home from Brown University visiting her parents, and asked her if there was room in the car. I knew she and some others were heading back to Rhode Island that night. I packed my little red backpack with a stack of books (one of which was the poems of Arthur Rimbeau) a few clothes and my toothbrush. Jessica lived on Hope Street in a huge apartment which was the second and third floor of a former rooming house. She shared it with six other Brown University students. I baked bread and washed dishes for the house while looking for jobs and my own apartment. We ate supper every night as a group. I remember having laughing fits during the nightly post-supper tea. I met a bunch of smart wonderful people, some of whom are still close friends. Rhode Island became my home.

Anne Lamott: Give and Give and Give

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again. . . . Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.

— Anne Lamott

33

33 years ago my sax teacher Gregg Mazel told me it was time to get a new mouthpiece for my sax.

So I asked for one for my birthday/Christmas and my mother screamed,"That's not a gift!"

So it all got put away.

Today I have a box of reeds and I will try to find a rubberhard plastic mouthpiece that I like.

I just had to wait 33 years.

Iguana in the Bathtub

When the temperature dipped below 40, iguanas started falling from the trees. Small, sleek green iguanas; big iguanas as long as four feet from snout to tail, scales cresting gloriously from their heads; orange-and-green iguanas, their muscled, goose-pimpled arms resolving into sharp claws. Iguanas were everywhere: in the bushy areas surrounding canals, on sidewalks, in backyards, lying helpless among the fallen, rotting fruit of mango and orange trees.

The iguanas lay on the ground as if they were dead, a rhapsody of corpses dotting the landscape like musical notation. But they weren’t dead Article

To Laugh or Cry

Article

Harlan Coben

The old man’s gaze drifted over my shoulder. “What’s that like?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s your novel, right?”
He gestured at the four books on the shelf behind me.
“Right,” I said.
He shook his head in awe. “That’s my dream, man. Seeing my book on a shelf in a bookstore.” He lowered his gaze and met my eye. “So what’s that like?”
I paused, letting the question sink in, but before I could reply, the old man lifted his eyes back to the bookshelf, smiled, and shook his head again. “Lucky,” he said, before turning and walking away.
He didn’t buy a book. He didn’t have to.

- Harlan Coben, NYT source

Harlan Coben is the author of the novels “Tell No One,” “Missing You” and the forthcoming “The Stranger.”

Chie Nishio Photographer

In Ms. Nishio’s photos, a scribe letters a Torah scroll and a baker wields a tray of matzos. A bride-to-be, who will have to cover her hair for reasons of modesty, tries on her first wig. In a ritual called upsherin, a 3-year-old boy receives his first haircut, the sign that he will soon begin his religious education. There are portraits of Chabad women who work as a lawyer, a painter and a magazine editor.

These photographs attest not only to Ms. Nishio’s meticulous skill, which she honed over a half-century, but to the condition of her soul, a capacity for empathy across both literal and metaphorical oceans of difference.

The daughter of a railroad mechanic, Ms. Nishio grew up in a Japan ravaged by World War II. Unable to afford college, she went to work as a self-described “office girl.” Only in the early 1960s, when she was already in her 30s, did she find a two-year trade school for photography. There she fell in love with journalism.
Article

Alex Lemon

when it goes
Black, we will bang our fists
On whatever’s closest to speak
To each other about
The loveliness all over us.

-Alex Lemon

Juno Poem

t of you all dayugday
thoughou all day
ght oall day
tol day
thou of you day

Sauna

A saunas’ dry heat (which can get as high as 185° F) has profound effects on the body. Skin temperature soars to about 104° F within minutes. The average person will pour out a pint of sweat during a short stint in a sauna. The pulse rate jumps by 30% or more, allowing the heart to nearly double the amount of blood it pumps each minute. Most of the extra blood flow is directed to the skin; in fact, the circulation actually shunts blood away from the internal organs. Blood pressure is unpredictable, rising in some people but falling in others.

“All in all, saunas appear safe for the body, but there is little evidence that they have health benefits above and beyond relaxation and a feeling of well-being,” says Dr. Harvey Simon, editor-in-chief of Harvard Men’s Health Watch. However, heart patients should check with their doctors before taking a sauna. Studies show them to be safe for people with stable coronary artery disease. “But patients with poorly controlled blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, unstable angina, and advanced heart failure or heart valve disease will probably be advised to stay cool,” says Dr. Simon.

Article
Wikipedia article

Seeds of Contemplation

from Thomas Merton's book, New Seeds of Contemplation

Ultimately the only way I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence. Therefore, there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him, I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find Him.
- Thomas Merton

...The basic disposition in the spiritual journey is the capacity to accept all reality; God, ourselves, other people, and all creation as they are.
- Fr. Thomas Keating

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Fr. Pierre Teihard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and philosopher

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
- Julian of Norwich

If you're going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

Virginia Mudd

home
I created this website to accompany my books, Bicycling Home, My Journey to Find God, and Across America on the Yellow Brick Road. It is also a continuation of my own spiritual path, a place for me to share my passion for and fascination with the spiritual journey with you.

I've been consciously on this path of exploration, investigation, discovery, and transformation for over 35 years. After all these years it is still a mystery, which is partly what makes it so compelling, so interesting.

My outer and inner explorations are recounted in part in these two books, which are focused around bicycle adventures. Across America on the Yellow Brick Road tells of a 3,500-mile trip with another woman from California to Washington, D.C. in 1978. Bicycling Home, My Journey to Find God, is centered around a solo bike trip I made from the Bay Area in California to the Grand Tetons of Wyoming in 1984. (And. no, you don't have to even know how to ride a bike to appreciate the journey!) Both books are about my journey to find myself and find God, the most mysterious, arduous, adventurous, rewarding journey of my life.

Along the way I've gained insights that I feel are useful and relevant to many of us who are on the spiritual path as we strive to know ourselves better, to be more connected and loving to each other, the earth, the cosmos and ourselves.

Many of the insights I gained "after the fact," after the terrifying struggle with my food addiction and the suffering of an unworkable love relationship. (How I wished it had been the other way around!) For example, Jungian Marion Woodman says: "...their addiction is their way to truth... in the addiction is the hidden treasure...It is their particular sacred journey, their Tao, their Way." And Robert Johnson says: "The suffering of romance is ultimately no different than the suffering of mysticism and religion."

Both these transformative experiences called me to follow my heart as I sought ways to escape the hell of addiction, and answers to the agony of romantic love. Above all I wanted to satisfy my deepest longing--to find and have union with God.

While my particular spiritual journey turns out to be intimately connected with Christ and Christianity, I consider myself a spiritually independent Christian. There are many paths to our spiritual homes, and many names for God (I'm not out to convert anyone!) and I have been, and continue to be, guided and inspired by the wisdom teachings of many spiritual traditions. My most important teachers are... Thomas Merton, Marion Woodman, M. Scott Peck, Robert Johnson, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ram Dass, Tessa Bielecki, Paul Tillich, Pema Chodron, Fr. Thomas Keating, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Thich Nhat Hanh, Byron Katie, and others, as well as wonderful people who do not make teaching their profession.

I hope you will join me on this continuing, incredible journey.Article

Grist for the Mill

Grist for the Mill
Ram Dass, Stephen Levine
HarperOne 02/14 Paperback $15.99
ISBN: 9780062235916

Ram Dass is the bestselling author of Remember, Be Here Now and Journey of Awakening. Born Richard Alpert, his spiritual search took him from being a Harvard professor of psychology to the Himalayas. In India, he found his guru and was given the name Ram Dass, which means "Servant of God." He returned to the United States and became a meditation and workshop leader. Stephen Levine is the former director of the Hanuman Foundation Dying Project and one of the foremost experts on death and grief in the world. In this revised version of a book originally published in 1976, the authors presents edited transcripts of speeches, lectures, articles, and retreats. Ram Dass begins with an explanation of Namaste:

"In India when we meet and part we often say, 'Namaste,' which means I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."

Ram Dass makes it clear at the outset that what he has to say on these pages is "that which is universal to all that lives in the true spirit." We are all beings "going to God" and each one of us has a different path to take. No matter what our vocation or work in life, it is up to us to be the living spirit of Christ or Buddha or Krishna or Tara. But at the same time, the challenge is to avoid being "phony holy" — appearing holier than we are. Ram Dass shares an account of a bad experience with a woman guru where he got his "karmauppance." On the other hand, he reveals the guiding prescription for his life received from Maharaj-ji: his guru: Love, Serve, and Remember.

After offering a guided meditation, Ram Dass gives some thoughtful answers to very tough questions on interpreting dreams, neurotic habits, the judging mind, opening your heart, sexual desire, and more. The book ends with chapters on dying as an opportunity for awakening, freeing the mind, and God and Beyond. We will leave you with a sample of Ram Dass' spiritual insight:

"The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out our reactivity, which is our attachment, our clinging, to pain, to pleasure, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there are places that we're vulnerable, the universe will find ways to confront us with them. That's the way the dance is designed. . . . And we get so that we're perfectly willing to do whatever we do — and to do it perfectly. It's like Mahatma Gandhi gets put in jail and they give him a lice-infested uniform and tell him to clean the latrines, and it's a whole mess. And he walks up to the head of the guards and he says, in total truth, 'Thank you.' He's not putting them on or up-levelling them. He's saying, 'There's a teaching here, and I'm getting it; thank you.' What's bizarre is that we get to the point where somebody lays a heavy trip on us and we get caught, and then we see through our catch-ness and we say, 'Thank you.' We may not say it aloud because it's too cute. But we feel 'thank you.' People come up and are violent or angry or write nasty letters or whatever they do to express their frustration or anger or competition, and all I can say is thanks."

A Quiet Room Alone

I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
-Isak Dinesen

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
-Aldous Huxley

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
-Carl Jung

Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face.
-Loren Eiseley

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you're the easiest person to fool.
-Richard Feynman

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
-Blaise Pascal

Segmented Sleep

Quote on Ultrashort Sleep Findings
From "Why We Nap," Claudio Stampi:
(Referring to a study in chapter 12; page 195)

The implications of what emerged from this series of studies are discussed in greater detail, within the broader context of a review on other polyphasic sleep studies, in Chapters 1 and 10. In brief, findings described in this chapter do not appear to contradict the following hypothesis:

Adult humans appear to have a natural ability to adapt to polyphasic sleep schedules.
The 4-hr ultradian cycle of sleep-wake pressure previously described may be an important factor in allowing adaptation to polyphasic patterns.
The sleep-wake system appears to show a high level of flexibility in terms of sleep timing and duration.
Polyphasic sleep may be a feasable, and perhaps the only, strategy allowing remarkable levels of sleep reduction during prolonged quasi-continuous work situations, without unduly compromising performance effectiveness.
This may be analogous to what is observed in a considerable number of mammalian species, particularly in those living in dangerous environments.
Further studies extended to a larger sample of subjects may provide powerful tools for developing sleep-wake schedules for individuals involved in irregular or quasi-continuous work situations.
These findings and hypothesis raise challenging questions concerning what is known about the regulatory mechanisms of sleep function.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quote on the 4-hr Ultradian Cycle
From "Why We Nap," Claudio Stampi (pg 8):

Under less-structured environments multiple naps do occur throughout the 24 hr, and many subjects exhibit polyphasic sleep similar to that observed in nonhuman species. Such spontaneous naps do not recur randomly throughout the day. Rather, their striking regularity allowed speculation on the existence of an ultradian 4-hr component of the sleep-wake cycle that may be superimposed on the more robust circadian and midafternoon components. In fact, 4-hr cycles in sleep propensity have been found in many studies conducted in unstructured environments (e.g., Nakagawa, 1980; Zulley, 1988). These findings are probably not surprising to investigators familiar with the 4-hr sleep-wake pattern observed in infants. More recently, 4-hr cycles in the expression of SWS have also been found in the frequent daytime naps in a population of narcoleptics (see Chapter 15).

It is worth mentioning that anthropological studies conducted in tribes active at night show that human sleep can be highly polyphasic in certain cultures. Although they have different cultures and ways of life, both the Temiars of Indonesia and the Ibans of Sarawak have similar polyphasic sleep-wake behaviors (Petre-Quadens, 1983).

Article

Amos House is Expanding

The Providence Journal
Eileen Hayes, CEO of Amos House, visits the Friendship Café. Weekly specials include chicken pot pie on Mondays.

By KAREN LEE ZINER

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — After more than 36 years, Amos House will be getting a new home. The nonprofit agency will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday for a $6-million community center, scheduled to open in December 2015.

“It’s a new building for Amos House’s guests, for all of their needs,” president and CEO Eileen Hayes said Wednesday. Supportive housing will remain separate.

The agency provides support for Rhode Islanders who are hungry, homeless and in crisis, and operates the largest soup kitchen in the state. Since its founding in 1976, Amos House has evolved from grassroots soup kitchen to comprehensive social-services agency.

The four-level, 29,000-square-foot structure on the Amos House’s existing property will include a new soup kitchen with a larger dining hall, classrooms, community rooms, training centers and consolidated staff offices.

U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, who were instrumental in securing a federal earmark of $730,500 for the project, and Governor Chafee, will be among the guest speakers on Monday.

The ceremony will be at 10 a.m. on the construction site at 460 Pine St., behind the current Amos House soup kitchen.

“We’re really excited because it [the new building] will allow us to bring our programs that are located offsite into one building,” Hayes said.

“All of our staff will be in one building, all of our programs in one building. We’ll have a nicer environment in the dining hall and more consistent delivery of services for men and women and families who come to us for services.”

She added: “We’ve been trying to raise this money for the past five years, so we’re really excited to be breaking ground.” Construction actually started last month, she said.

“We’re just incredibly grateful to the funders of this project and donors who have made some very generous gifts to our campaign,” Hayes said. “We still have a ways to go. We need another million to build the reserve and furnish the building.”

Amos House owns 14 buildings, 11 of which are used for housing. Eight are at the Friendship-Pine streets location. Staff consolidation will free up more space for housing.

A full-scale carpentry shop and a classroom for the culinary program will replace the existing offsite locations. The literacy program will also move in-house.

The 1983 concrete-block dining hall will be torn down, and the space will be used for parking, Hayes said.

“The dining hall is very cold in the winter, and, in the summer, we can’t air-condition it. It’s not wired for air-conditioning,” Hayes said. With the new building, “clients will no longer have to leave the dining hall and go into an adjacent building for support services.”

The new dining hall will allow 20 percent more people at each meal, and the new building will allow Amos House to accept 30 to 50 percent more students in its culinary, carpentry and entrepreneurial programs.
“When the soup kitchen was built, we served 100 meals a day,” Hayes said. “Typically, on any given day, we serve 500 to 700 meals.”

Buy Local

If Rhode Islanders shifted 10 percent of what they buy from large, out-of-state chain stores to locally owned businesses, it could pump $373 million into the state’s economy, the foundation says.

“I think it’s very important in this day and age, especially with so many people going to the Internet,” she says. “I think it’s important for each and every community, not just for Newport but nationwide, that people support their local companies. We’re unique. We’re special.… That’s what makes a community unique.”

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