Monthly Archives: March 2026

My Little Life

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Yesterday, catching-up on the phone with a friend, I said in response to our mutual lament on the state of the world, I just keep doing my piece of the work, along with the rest of my little life.

My little life! echoed the depressed, despairing child that lives inside of me. It’s one of the things that keeps me up at night when the inner critics are jazzed on caffeine and partying away. Why should anything in your little life matter and why aren’t you doing enough to stop the tidal wave of horror that’s sweeping over everything around you? 

It gets to the point where I can’t read the news stories any more, like this one where ICE tricked a father with no criminal record and arrested him when he went to ICE to reunite with his children. Or the emails from friends in the community about people they know personally–caregivers, neighbors, friends being kidnapped and sent to Texas or Louisiana with no hope of bail. Not to mention the horror of a new war. And the constant twisting of language into an unrelenting spewed and venomous hatred of any one who is “other” in any way, shape, or form.

But enough ranting. What is “my little life,” anyway? Is it enough?

Here’s a snapshot:

Wake up. Open the shade and consider the sky. Sunny or cloudy? Spend a moment taking in the potential of the day. Center on the long reach of the naked trees. They’re still here, so you can be, too. Sit somewhere you can look out the window at the tree, and do your 5 minutes of breathing practice. Turn on the phone and play a 10 minute meditation tape. Do NOT open email or social media until you’ve done this. Then, quickly scan your email, but only for 5 minutes max. Go downstairs, where your partner is waiting, for 30 minutes of exercise: cardio, yoga, or strength-training. Segue into breakfast. Take your vitamins.

Finally, get to your computer with a large cup of tea. Consider the choices spread before you if you’re lucky enough to have a morning with no appointments. Generate new writing, revise writing, send out writing, work through the never-ending pile of house/admin; and all the activist tasks–emails, articles and letters to read or write, writing from others to edit, phone calls. Ask yourself two questions: which option calls the most right now, and which option is most urgent? You may get two different answers. You may get seven different answers, but try to make a choice. Try, despite your dopamine-craving brain to focus on whatever choice you made. Try NOT to stop what you’re doing to check your email and read more horror stories (a.k.a news).

If you do have appointments. Sit by your computer and talk to the people in the Zoom squares. Admire people’s writing. Chew on nuances in political strategy. Volunteer for more than you think you can do easily, and get overwhelmed. Or know this is your tendency, and only volunteer for half of what draws you.

Interrupt writing blog post for urgent phone call about flyer for Street Theatre Presentation at No Kings Day in Easthampton and Amherst that needs to be sent to the printer this morning. Interruption for all of you: Please go to a No Kings Day protest this Saturday, March 28th!! And bring a friend, or three!

Eventually it will be lunch time. After lunch, try to set aside time for a walk in the woods. Visit your favorite tree. Try to do this even if it’s cloudy, or nasty. If it’s really nasty, go to the Y. Or go to the Y anyway if you’re going into town to run errands, or see a friend, or if you’re on your way home from taking care of your grandson.

Photo by Shel Horowitz

Take care of your grandson as often as you can. Jump fully into the world of a three-year-old who knows nothing about wars. Don’t think about the three-year-olds in detention. Don’t think about the three-year-olds whose parents are in detention. Don’t think about the three-year-olds who were killed in the wars in Gaza or in Iran, or the ones whose parents are dead.

When it’s your turn to cook dinner, spend mindful time preparing a nourishing meal. After dinner, call your 92-year-old mother and listen to the details of her day. Study Spanish, then practice piano or do your voice/yoga exercises and sing your heart out with karaoke tracks on you-tube. Chat with a friend. Watch a show. Do the crossword puzzle together with your partner or curl up with a book. Give your brain a rest from its obligations. Take a hot, relaxing shower and try to turn off the light before midnight. Try to sleep at least 7 hours. 8 is better, though it will skew your day so that you’ll feel behind as soon as you wake up.

Rinse. Repeat. And remember, spring is coming, so, soon, it will be all this, plus gardening.

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Art for the Joy of It

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My partner, Shel, and I are fans of Northampton’s monthly Arts Night Out. It’s fun to run into people we don’t see very often and enjoy a glass of wine and some juicy, guilty bites of food we don’t stock at home. But most importantly, it’s a great way to support the galleries and the artists whose work they showcase.

Last Friday, we were delighted to see an exhibit called Headspace, by Connor O’Rourke, an installation of over 150 large-scale, “heads” made of recycled cardboard, paint, hot glue, crafting scraps, and trash.

After a day (like many recent days) where I was feeling down because of the onslaught of distressing world news, being immersed in a room whose walls were covered by these whimsical and colorful figures gave me just the shot of joy and hope I needed.

I’ve written a lot about how art can be used for political and social change, but now I’m realizing that art has a strong role to play just a mood changer. And while I don’t want to grind people’s desire to make change to a halt by urging them to default to a state of perpetual inactive bliss, we absolutely need moments of lightness to inspire us and to counter all the dark in our lives. This might be another tall order for artists of any modality to try to make this happen, but hopefully it can be done in a context that might be more fun than our usual.

I was even more struck by O’Rourke’s comments, which he printed on the discarded cartons from the kitchen where he worked, the same base material he used to make his heads.

 I spent a long time trying to be the artist I was supposed to be and I kept letting myself down, but you can’t let yourself down when you’re just goofing around with paint and trash. It feels good to make a mess–to work with your hands, turn nothing into something and revel in a process you find delightful, whatever that thing might be for you, know that you can just love it, it doesn’t owe you anything and you don’t need anything in return. It’s yours, be vulnerable and unconditional with it and give it what it needs to grow. 

Wow!

Couldn’t we say the same thing about a poem? A story? A song… or anything else we might create?

So often we get stuck in the idea of producing something of merit, rather than just having fun, forgetting that the freedom of letting go of expectations and self-judgment can often lead us to surprising and illuminating places.

Headspace is at the Anchor House of Artists New England Visionary Arts Museum, a gallery on the edge of Northampton that is known for its support for artists with neurodivergence and mental health challenges. They describe themselves on their Facebook page as “a place where professionals & the self-taught find equal stance within a mission of creative freedom.” I’ve seen many great exhibits there, so if you’re in Western Mass., I urge you to check them out.

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Body, Mind, Spirit

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A couple of mornings ago, by the window where I sit to meditate, a robin perched on one of the bare branches of my elderly-but-still-hanging-in-there maple tree, painted so evocatively here by my friend, Janet Morgan, several springs ago. (Check out her work at https://www.janetmorgan-art.net/)

Art by Janet Morgan

Afterwards, I took my first outdoor race-walk of the season, grateful that the snow, had *finally* melted. As I trotted along the road, I heard a cacophony of birds, and again I felt grateful that I was both being mindful enough to pay attention, and that my crappy hearing was allowing their songs to come through. My route started with a gradual but long uphill, and I found myself huffing and puffing a little more than I would have liked. Even though I had been maintaining my fitness with indoor cardio, strength-training, and yoga, as well as taking sloggy snow walks all winter, I hadn’t really pushed myself. But some recent (relatively minor) health issues have made it clear that I need to up the ante.

I’m grateful to have a body, I told myself, even if it can sometimes be an annoying place to live. And then I thought about how much of my day is devoted to taking care of my body, mind and spirit. Really, now that I’m retired, nearly all of my day touches on one–or more–of these aspects of my being that will only thrive if I give them love and attention.

I’m not a categorizer by nature. My recent “Kondo-izing Poems” project, while gratifying, also had many excruciating moments where I couldn’t decide whether a poem belonged into the folder of poems to be worked on, the totally inactive poems, or the “Meh” poems, which is kind of like the minor leagues. And let’s not even talk about my bookshelf, my closet, or my filing cabinets. Yet, I did find myself pondering my daily activities and thinking about whether I would classify each of them as body, mind, or spirit. And [no] surprise! So many had overlap, I quickly gave up on the categorization game.

But maybe that’s the point: taking care of the body through meditation and exercise–two staples of my daily diet–is essential for my spirit. And writing, while a mostly mind-massage practice, can also be a big spiritual uplift, at least during the times I’m in the groove. Spending time focused on others, rather than oneself, can be invigorating in opening up some mental pathways that generally go unused, or opening the heart/spirit through emotional connection. And for me, engaging in the nitty-gritty of activism engages the part of my mind that likes to problem-solve and helps my spirit through connecting to others and giving me a lifeline to hope.

I guess it doesn’t really matter what categories our activities fall into. What does matter is to choose a diet that will create a sense of uplift, gratitude, and grounding in our own beings so we can do the work in the world that we’re meant to do.

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Writing in Hard Times

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A couple of nights ago, I went to see my friend Ellen Meeropol read from her new book, Sometimes an Island, a novel about human resilience and connection after a climate catastrophe. One of the questions she was asked packed a punch for me–and I believe it also resonated for many others in the room. How Do You Keep Writing in Hard Times? 

While the audience did contain a large number of people who identified as writers, activists, or both, I think the question is universal. How do any of us do anything in hard times? How do we get out of bed in the morning? How do we engage in the regular routines of the day without falling into mental pits of excessive worry and paralysis? Is it truly enough to follow the clichéd but still useful advice of embracing gratitude, staying in the moment, and appreciating the small joys? And if we find a way of staying on the gratitude/small joys path, how do we balance our own mental health with confronting the monsters of climate change, war, racism, and countless other forms of injustice, so they don’t grow even bigger?

When Elli opened this question to other people in the room, I said, I can’t not write in hard times, because writing is my way of processing the hard stuff. And I think this is true for other creative beings (musicians, visual artists, etc.) whether or not you directly engage with political issues in your artistic life. Writing a poem, even a poem I won’t do anything with, can help me deal with paralyzing feelings. And when I’ve produced a piece of writing that feels more polished and finished, the process of creating and sharing that with others enhances my sensitivity, and hopefully provides readers a window in which to reconsider the view of their previous perceptions and gain new insights.

Elli also said that she doesn’t set out to provide answers in her writing, only to explore questions. I think this is an important direction and distinction for writers and other creative artists. After keeping my writing mostly separate from my politics because everything I tried to write sounded fake and didactic, I realized that I needed to center on the nuance, not the solution.  When I finally put together my immigration-justice themed short story collection  Immigrants, and my chapbook of poems, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling in a sense, all I was doing was whirling around my own questions. I had no answers (and no evidence that any so-called “answer” I came up with would be the right answer). I only wanted to expose what had been ignored by a harsh rationalistic rhetoric that focuses on question/answer, right/wrong and completely ignores its potential impact on human beings.

I haven’t yet read Elli’s newest book, but based on what I heard from her reading and how much I enjoyed her previous novels, I can happily recommend it. And even if it doesn’t solve these bigger questions, I’m sure it will help me think more deeply about them.

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