Wildflowers are simple. They are flowers that grow in the wild, not where we demand them to grow. They do not obediently line our sidewalks, arrange themselves by order of height in our mulched beds, fill our wrought iron boxes, spill over our terra cotta pots. Wild means self-determined, free, priceless.
Comfort is supposed to follow a challenge, not replace one. Tension, risk, and physical or emotional discomfort are parts of larger experiences that are worth having, so there is no need to dread or avoid them. With a shift in focus, they shrink in proportion to the part that matters.
Instead of isolating specific, idiosyncratic causes, we have to look at the larger framework. Because something about where U.S. society has landed is giving dark emotions more of a foothold. Resentment and despair are not new. Guns are not new. But shootings at this level and frequency are.
The memories I treasure tend to follow some sort of risk or effort; they feel earned. Like making a painting or a sweater or a wooden box, they rewarded and commemorated an investment of time, patience, sweat, courage, and attention.
Marketers are throwing themselves at us. Repeatedly. And because we drop newspaper subscriptions and fast-forward through commercials and prefer streaming to broadcast and block ads on our computers, marketing has become a flat-out wrestling match.
Very few people I knew growing up had braces, but most of us just gnawed the trees as we were designed by nature to do.
Decades ago, Hannah Arendt wrote of a “common world” that could only exist if “differences of position and the resulting variety of perspectives notwithstanding, everybody is always concerned with the same object.” Now the common world has exploded.
Wright has figured out how to build small, affordable homes he could be proud of. He calls them Usonian, because they capture the democratic spirit of the United States. They are simple—no paint, stucco, or wallpaper; no basement, attic, or garage.
The word “abstract” means to remove something; to condense; to lack a concrete, physical existence. Abstraction is supremely useful—but it should not wind up more highly valued than the world from which it abstracts.
They pressed the plunger and put the pink death fluid in the clearly defined black vein of Rascal’s back right leg. He died with his head in my palm. He was my kitty boy.