i was in the middle of writing a piece about a book i am currently reading & loving when i paused to read a biography about carol ruckdeschel and her fight to save the sea turtles & their home on cumberland island. (when it comes to books, i find myself completely unable to read just one.)

when i read these lines, i just had to share them.

“She closed her eyes and let the darkness settle in. Is this what death will look like? she wondered. There wouldn’t even be the color black. She felt utterly empty and blank, like the gaze of the turtle carcass in the meadow. She didn’t want to die and become nothing. She loved being alive so much.

Then she opened her eyes and looked up again at the blackness between the stars. Her tiny speck of life was utterly insignificant in the sweep of space. Its vastness left her feeling dizzy and disoriented. But it also made her feel something else, something surprisingly close to … free. She was completely, utterly free to live her one and only life until she died. Death was as natural and necessary as life, and both were far older and larger than she had imagined. Each breath connected her to the first algae and the last dinosaur. All the animals that had ever lived and died – they were all part of the same precious matter – and so was she. She belonged to it all, from the stars to the soil. She wasn’t nothing. She was everything.”

~ from the book Untamed by Will Harlan

she wasn’t nothing. she was everything.

yes, yes, yes.

(also apropos, since recently, i came to a similar conclusion.)

I am currently reading The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. It had been on my to-read list for a while so I finally requested it from the library. The book is pure poetry, full of truth + beauty + wisdom.

Like this, the entry for February 19, Instead of Breaking.

“With the precise tools of modern medicine, unborn children who are malforming or experiencing obstructions can now be operated on in utero. Profoundly, these state-of-the-art techniques reveal a deep timeless truth about growth and healing. For just as amazing as the fact of these operations, is the fact that these surgeries leave no scars once the infant is born.

What this tells us is that if we tend to things at the deepest level, our repair will be so much a part of who we are that there will be no scar. It is easier to bend underneath the surface in the deep timeless fluid of the beginning, than to break once fully grown.

But it is too late for me, you might say, I am already full-grown. Not so, for in the world of our inwardness, we are always growing and are blessed to carry that fluid beginning within us. It is never really out of reach.

We can return and begin again by facing ourselves. In this way, we can go below our hardened ways to the soft impulses that birth them. Instead of breaking the bone of our stubbornness, we can nourish the marrow of our feeling unheard. Instead of breaking the bone of our fear, we can cleanse the blood of our feeling unsafe. Instead of counting the scars from being hurt in the world, we can find and re-kiss the very spot in our soul where we began to withhold our trust.”

That last paragraph! I keep reading it. It feels like a sweet sweet kiss. Also, it reminds me of moments of healing – when something that seems like an insurmountable problem falls away in an instant, leaving me filled with wonder.

If you read The Book of Awakening (past), or read it (present-future), do share what entries speak to you, please! I’d love to hear. I am bookmarking every entry that speaks to me, which basically means that I am bookmarking almost all of them. Clearly I need my very own copy.

i found this cute little kitty in cordoba. if atlas had been there, i imagine she (or he) would have looked less calm. then again, she was safely behind a fence, so maybe not.

i would like to be asleep right now, but i started reading stranger in a strange land. i wish i could remember that i am just not a science fiction fan, unless it’s the kind of science fiction that is like fantasy. like dune. i love/d dune. years ago, a coworker told me i should read dune and i refused, saying that i didn’t like science fiction. finally, i gave in and read it. the next day, i went out and bought all the books in the series.

speaking of book series, my one complaint with fantasy is that it always comes in a series, usually at least a trilogy. so, if i like a book, i have to read all the books right away, and then there goes my time until i’m finished. wait. maybe the problem isn’t that they come in a series. maybe the problem is that i don’t understand the concept of moderation and enjoying things slowly.

we had a 60 degree day today. it was so lovely. i was going to take atlas for a hike but, when we went outside, we found a tiny and scared and lost chihuahua. there went my next few hours. some very sweet people in the apartment complex office helped me catch it. they took it back to the office to rest and eat, and i think it may easily find a home if no one claims it. poor pup. it occurs to me that i have spent a lot of hours catching lost dogs and locating their people. maybe i am building up lost dog goodwill, though hopefully i never need it.

yesterday, i had truffle fries from little big burger. they are now my new gold standard in fries.

have i mentioned that i love graffiti? i do. i really do.

a friend of mine is living with me for the moment. over the years, i’ve occasionally worried that i was too old and too set in my ways to enjoy living with someone, but it turns out that i worried for nothing. living with a dear friend is really wonderful and i feel so lucky to have the opportunity. also, i am learning to enjoy the smell of coffee in the morning. i have decided that this bodes well for the future.

on a not entirely unrelated note – since you can live with roommates or significant others – if you happen to be single (and looking), i heartily recommend reading getting naked by harlan cohen. i saw it on a table of books at b&n and the title made me smile so i picked it up. the letters and replies he included (he’s an advice columnist) made me laugh so much that i bought the book. it is seriously the funniest and most useful book on relationships i’ve ever read. plus, i have managed to apply it to friendship and work. fair warning, my conversation is now peppered with, “as harlan says ..” or “i suspect harlan would say ..” yes, we are apparently on a first name basis. he is changing my life, one person at a time.

want to know how to make the best green smoothie? you need kale, a banana, and strawberries. first, slice the banana and eat the slices with a nutella-like spread. (the cocoa almond spread from trader joe’s is really good.) second, add the kale to a salad and top it with lots of thousand island dressing. third, eat the berries with sugar and cake and ice cream or whipped cream. de-licious.

how’s your monday so far?

i love love love to read. if i were going to define myself as "something", the one "something" that really resonates with me is reader.

the only time i remember getting in trouble in school was in first grade. we were supposed to be doing math problems out of a workbook. i was holding the workbook up in front of my face because i had a book hidden behind the workbook and was reading instead. unfortunately, the teacher came up behind me.

in middle school, i would bike to the library with my sisters every week and bring home a backpack full of books. the librarians let us ignore the limit and check out however many books we wanted so that we didn't have to visit every day.

i often wonder what i would be like if i didn't read. at the same time, i cannot imagine a life without reading at all.

i could never answer the question, "what's your favorite book?" i don't have one favorite, but i do have a short list of books that are my favorites because they have changed me in some way.

atlas shrugged (ayn rand). if you ever wonder where i got atlas' name, he is partly named after this book. i think my sister amy recommended it to me. i brought it along when i visited my grandparents one easter and could not put it down. do you know what i remember most? when i left the airport parking lot, i really wanted to pretend that i lost my parking ticket; it was cheaper to pay the "lost ticket maximum" than to pay the actual parking fee. i couldn't do it. it didn't align with who i wanted to be after reading the book. sometimes i find it rather strange that i love it so because i suspect i do not align with ayn rand either politically or spiritually, but the thing i took from the book was a desire to do the best i can with what i have – in order to be worthy of what i've been given and to express my appreciation and gratitude for all of it.

don't shoot the dog (karen pryor). atlas' breeder gave me this book as a gift on his first birthday. it's about positive reinforcement. when i finished, i had a vision for who/how i wanted to be/behave with atlas. everything i have done with him – or tried to do – or berated myself for falling short at – came from the principles in this book. everything i read (and continue to read) about dogs in my quest to be the best dog person i can be came from my vision of who i wanted to be after reading this book.

the prophet (kahlil gibran). i can't even remember why i bought this book in the first place, but i took it with me on a trip to seattle to visit a friend. i read it on the flight there and i spent most of the flight going, "oh! yes! oh! oh!" and underlining things and sniffling a little. i wrote in it – something i had never done to a book before and haven't really done since. there were parts of it where it felt like he reached in and grabbed bits of my soul – ideals that i tried to live by without being able to explain them – and poured them out onto the page in words. it made me think. it made me gasp. it was full of beauty. i think that if i absolutely had to pick one favorite book, this would probably be it.

the inmates are running the asylum (alan cooper). i've written about this book before, but essentially, it helped me find and articulate my passion for the user experience. (incidentally, i read this one on on a trip to england – on the train from london to swindon, to be exact – so it seems i might have a pattern of falling in love with the books i read while traveling.)

nickel and dimed (barbara ehrenreich). to be fair, this book is not exactly a longstanding favorite. it was a good quick read. i probably wouldn't read it again. there are other books that i prefer and return to, like savage inequalities (jonathan kozol) and the working poor: invisible in america (david shipler). i include it because it is the first book i read that helped me recognize and question my assumptions -assumptions i didn't even know i was making – and begin to investigate what i really believed and what i wanted to stand for and hold as important, instead of taking other people's assumptions and beliefs as my own without thinking about them. it also got me reading everything i could find about poverty and class and education, which was a fascinating (if sad) reading journey.

the untethered soul (michael singer). actually, if i had to pick one favorite, it might be a toss-up between this and the prophet. i don't really know how to talk about this book, except to say that every time i read it, i feel like i get a little glimpse of heaven.

so there you have it, a short list of books that have changed me. of course there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind in this moment.

i had an epiphany the other day that got me thinking about my favorite books and prompted this post. i just read switch by chip & dan heath. at one point, they talked about inspiring change via the identity model, where you get people to ask, "who am i? what would someone like me do in this situation?" i realized that that's what all of these books did for me. they made me ask myself that question; when i found the answer, it changed me.

now i'm so curious, do you have a book or books that have changed you?

i have a couple of quick announcements. imagine my disembodied voice booming over a loudspeaker. hee.

there are new images in the grab bag! in case you're looking for a wintry computer background, for example. it's still "choose your own price" – which i like to think of as a variation on "choose your own adventure". remember those books? i loved them. (i read them in a very methodical and logical manner, in order to be sure i covered every single possible adventure. now that i think about it, given that, it's no wonder i enjoyed programming.)

there are a few more days for the holiday special on the pause. i don't have any spots left this week, but if it speaks to you, you are welcome to buy a session and use it in the new year. resting and renewing and retreating – in the comfort of your own home – seems like the perfect thing for january.

ok. it's time for the disembodied voice to leave; if you like, you can imagine it singing "whistle while you work" as it goes. for some odd reason, that is the song that comes into my head most often.

i read tolkien's the hobbit yesterday after stumbling across a trailer for the movie version. i love the book, though i always forget just how much until i read it again. (as an aside, i want to live in a hobbit-hole.) this time, i noticed lots of bits that i wanted to write down in my journal. here are two of my favorites.

"Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway."

"It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait."