Peril And Promise

Duane Elgin On Simplicity And Humanity’s Future

Simplicity lies at the intersection of spirituality and sustainability. If you put spirituality, or the inner life, together with sustainability, or the outer life of maintaining things, what you come up with is the simple life.

Stigmata

I can’t dismiss religion and the girl with the stigmata with a sweep of my hand, for I feel a soul pushing at the walls of my breast. I believe in enlightenment and that our paths are divine. There’s no proof of it, but energy descends on me, and I feel like one raindrop amid thousands, all refracting light.

Remodeling The Hovel

I dig another nailhead out of the old siding with the cat’s-paw, slip a crowbar around it, and then draw the 16d sinker out. The squawk of the nail letting go jangles my nerves. If an unwelcome memory wanted to announce itself with a noise, the cry of a rusty nail would do the job.

Bathifying

I am a bath mystic. You can also be one. Read this and decide if bath mysticism intrigues you.

A Simpler Than Average Life

Details are my delight. In the country, many of the details have minds of their own: lady beetles crowding around, seeking winter hibernacula; knapweed flourishing everywhere; a raccoon and her pudgy kits climbing a cherry tree; a crow japing overhead. All this living, self-willed detail informs me in ways that cities no longer do.

Hospital Attack Wounds 3

Hearing herself, she waves her hand. “It’s not. . . . It’s trucky.” The words leaving her mouth flutter around her like small, confused birds that keep bumping into each other in midflight.

Past Lives

Flight