Nothing dislocates the apple cart of order, spills humdrum on its ear quite like a fine art museum.

The Denver Art Museum has dedicated much of its real estate this summer to mud.

Their Marvelous Mud: Clay Around the World show has something for literally everyone.




Pubic covers made of clay were fashion-forward in the ancient pre-Columbian Marajó culture in northern Brazil.

Bikini bottoms in 600 A.D.!

Clay foxes had a field day at a gleaming red café.

Two Cubans dreamed up a permanent getaway vehicle.

And this stunning mother of four,

made of straw-stuffed erosion control tubes smoothed with Colorado adobe, is still in progress.

You can see Roxanne Swentzell complete the 10’ tall sculpture “Mud Woman Rolls On” in the coming weeks. (Call the museum for days and times.)

This sculpture stopped everyone in their tracks. The artist says of it: "The special thing about this sculpture is it is going to be made of unfired mud. She will have her babies who are all of us. We are of the earth."

Aside from her gracious proportions, Mud Woman's hair is fantastic, you simply have to see it in person. It's like Tina Turner meditating in public, with kids.

Denver’s psychotic art plaza actually holds wonderful art within. Just don’t try to harmonize the cacophony of architectural styles as you approach.

If you’re looking for traditional art, well, just take another glance at the building. And be prepared for wonders unimagined.

My former cat Pete, now living on sixty acres of upland valley paradise, seemed always to get it right: play with abandon, climb any trees willing, keep neurotics at bay (oh, what an arsenal of weapons Pete had for keeping clear boundaries), lose toes, lose fights, win dominance in your own pacific home. For all his crusty bossy masculine ways, Pete was a full-on lover.

When I moved to Boulder and could not take a cat, didn’t the person coming to buy my loveseat scoop him up and say she knew the perfect home, with cows and kids and roadless horizons where he could hunt outdoors all day? Pete adopted me in the country, and to the country he returned.

Now, I live in high-density housing, where you could toss four different neighbors hot dog buns off the back deck if they called for ‘em. We are packed in tight. Rather than stay inside or drive to a park, I looked out all my windows and called up beauty. Wherefore art thou? I asked, from the balcony. I am astonished to report that even in a backyard skinny as two beans laid like an L, beauty came.

First, you trim the lilacs struggling in too much shade. You transplant strawberries and a shade-bound climbing rose against a sunny fence. Cover them with shade-giving cardboard for three weeks until new leaves emerge, and they sparkle. Cut curving bed lines and whack out sod, an hour or two each morning. Hang a bird feeder. Sink a used post to support the new grape vine.

Use the gravel under the deck to start a pathway. Make borders with hand-sized rocks. Move the hummingbird feeder three times, without luck, till you tie on a lucid red ribbon, then watch from the balcony as the lightning birds feed.

When you love your soil, love your views, love your neighbors’ sumac trees’ exotic foliage, dream of eggplants warm with sun, dream of iris, dream of songbirds, you are Pete, who grabs every moment out of doors and shakes it, until all the good falls out.

If you are too young yet to love gardens, grow old.

We’ve been conditioned to believe freedom comes after winning a battle (NOW I’M FREE), even if it’s a battle for a parking spot on a crowded city street. But the amped-up mindset needed to compete stays after the contest is over, and then where are we?

Amped.

You may call it revved or pumped. Your parents called it “acting out.”

The trouble is, acting out leads to the belief that we’re getting somewhere, when what we’re usually getting is more stuck. In anger, force, will, self-defense, desire, stress and more desire.


Reacting is goal-oriented. Reacting to the door-to-door solicitor with a growl and a slammed door means you did rid yourself of the intrusion but you also gained a gut-load of anger, and guess which one lasts longer? I speak from many slammed doors.

I have no silver bullet or five-part course on chillin’. I’m hoping to raise a little flag on a slender pole in the midst of the push-pull American feedlot frenzy to say: don’t ruin your health or our society in the name of winning. You do not have to be a heifer behind anybody’s bars.

Freedom feels nice. (Reactivity does not. It’s sort of itchy and hot and snowballing, and the contradictions are part of the whole seductive deal.)

Freedom is subtle, and not so highfalutin. Try casting no blame while holding your place. Retract the claws you want to sink into anything, issues as well as political systems as well as people. Remember your aunt or uncle or friend who had such a level head and an open mind? How you loved being around them? Be them.

Freedom has to start somewhere. We can all lower our psychic cholesterol.

“Instead of allowing ourselves to be led and trapped by our feelings,” Tibetan teacher Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche once said, “we should let them disappear as soon as they form, like letters drawn on water with a finger.”

“There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.”  --Rumi


"Everybody at the speed of light tends to become a nobody."

--Marshall McLuhan

What if the key to suffering is being a somebody. What if you planted a hundred trees, little trees or even seedlings or even just tree seeds, in the night while no one was watching? In a hundred years, the leaf canopy would spread and you would be…

Imagine yourself gone and the results of your deeds outlasting you.

The deed is the thing. The deed remains in the stream of things.

It is the same with people. Your impact on them outlasts your own small sacred shot at life. Or scared shot. Or scarred shot. You know how deep an impact difficult, demanding, dramatic people have on you. Their contractions lodge inside you. We suffer in order to realize that that contraction does not adequately describe reality. Does not do her justice. Cannot cover the beautiful, frightening, amazing bases.

And so we must open and perish.

Transparency is all the rage right now. Transparency means see through. Transparency, according to Wikipedia, “implies openness, communication, and accountability.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we lived transparent lives? Woke up and went through each day openly responding to situations, speaking clearly, and taking the blame? Gave away all the credit. Waited without claiming results. That is traveling light.

We are traveling light. Light bent interestingly backwards to show the world itself. Neitzsche says, “We have art so that we are not destroyed by the truth.” I wonder if art leads us to that destruction with a tender hand? “Let go of the earth, white hand,” the poet Richard Schramm writes. “With nothing below, we are rooted in silence, waiting.”

That is our work. To let go. To wait and see. To travel light, with some singing and head scratching along the way. Light travels. Is it so terrifying, knowing actions outlive forms?

You can't keep a good thing down.

It's nature's way. This tree, having endured heaven knows what death-dealing impact, sprang to life this spring, as trembly green and fragrant as all its compadres on the creek trail by the peacock farm at Greenbelt Meadows, near my home.

Ah, greenbelt. Ah, meadows. Ah, forming oneself around and with and through the blows dealt in the course of growing up. That is why I love trees: they don't mask their injuries, they capitalize on them, when they can.

My novel Tributary, the one that took twelve years and nearly a hundred drafts to complete, the one based on my Mormon pioneer ancestors, the one that's been sitting in a closet for six years recovering from the blow of non-interest by the publishing world, just sent trembly green and fragrant leaves out to dapple my trail. It has a publisher. Torrey House Press will print Tributary by Christmas.

Which makes me mighty glad.

Newsweek says this is The Mormon Moment. The Mormon Moment apparently extends to the literary world, as well. Stay tuned, as I'll be updating my website this summer—with photos and excerpts and such from Tributary—in preparation for the holiday launch.

Take heart. If you live through the heart-stopping difficulties, they can form and strengthen and even liberate you.

Life needs your sap, your dappling of the path, your instincts, your particular expression of this momentary joy.

I just received my second royalty check for GUEST HOUSE. The checks come every six months in a large white folder packed with info and joy. I sold 213 copies between December and May. In many circles, those are small potatoes. The way I figure it, "I am a few miles luckier, a few clouds wealthier, a few shoes humbler," and the small potatoes are the sweet ones. With red jackets!

So it's time to say thank you to everyone who has purchased a book, atttended a reading or cheered from the sidelines. I am grateful to you all.

If the fates are kind, another novel will emerge from the potato patch. Right now it's rooty research and dreams...

There's an open gate in every moment. Will you stop at the rail?

To quote Pema Chodren: You are sky, everything else is just weather.

Guest blog by my friend Paul McCurdie, who travels for work, and works to eat!

Of all of the places I’ve been, the most memorable experiences tend to be in Milano. Particularly restaurants in Milano with friends who happen to be co-workers. Gabriele, the manager of our office, always takes me to amazing restaurants. My favorite is an unassuming little place near the Basilica de Sant’ Ambrosio:  Pane e Acqua. If you didn’t know the restaurant was there, you’d be hard pressed to find it. There is no sign outside. The owner and chef is Francesco Passalacqua.  Gabriele happens to know him well. He loves to cook and it shows in his food.

Inside there are 5 tables in the front room with the bar and maybe 8 in the back. There is a large table in the basement. You see it when you go to the restroom. The restroom is pretty cool. Yes, singular. It’s a small restaurant, why do you need more than one toilet?

My first visit there was in 2008. Chef Passalacqua came up from downstairs as we were shown our table in the front room. He greeted Gabriele and moved us to the corner table in the back room. I remember this night well because it was the single best meal I’ve had. It also had the single most memorable thing I’ve eaten. More on that later.

He prepares traditional Italian dishes with a modern twist. He also does his own thing. All of the pasta is made there and is amazing.

Now, the first visit: we read the menu. They don’t have an English translation but we manage between my bilingual colleagues and my pidgin Italian. Sidebar: I’ve learned that one needs to understand three things in foreign languages—food, drink and where is the bathroom? Anyway, we figured it out; the wait staff speaks some English as well. Our orders were placed. We were enjoying a nice Italian red Gabriele picked out—I don’t remember what it was other than it was good. Gabriele knows his wines. The waitress comes out of the kitchen and informs us that the chef is cooking for us tonight. We don’t know what we are getting. This is my kind of adventure: one that involves food. It’ll be just like eating in China but the possibility of pig’s asses being served is low.

I don’t remember all of the dishes. There was baby squid, a suckling pig spare rib, fish with spaghetti alla chitara, tortellini and some beef I believe. All of it was wonderful. 

The dish that we all remember the most is the lattume de tonno. We were discussing it last week when I was in Milano. Three little white balls with a little olive oil, black pepper and bright green fresh pesto. That was all that was in the bowl. My colleagues didn’t know what lattume was—it’s a Sicilian dish. They are from Northern Italy. Our waitress understood our confusion, so she helped: “Sperm sack of tuna.” Neither sperm nor sack are words you want to hear applied to your meal. She left us in stunned silence. We sat there looking at each other. I took the approach I use in China: steel myself to try whatever it is they put in front of me—9 times out of 10 it’s good—but have my wine, water and a piece of bread at the ready in case this is the 1 of 10. It was amazingly good. Tender, not a big flavor, but a deep one. The pesto was amazing.

I’ve been back two other times. Last year it was when the white truffles were on. They perfumed the whole place. We had two dishes with the truffles: a simple risotto Milanese and the Italian equivalent of steak tartar. Both were wonderful. There were other dishes—I don’t remember what they were. The truffle dishes stole the show.

I was there just last Thursday. Gabriele called to book a table. Passalacqua answered the phone. Gabriele told him we were coming and the chef said he would make something for us. As usual it was an amazing dinner: marinated rombo—which I think is flounder—with homemade foie gras and mostarda, white bean soup (the beans were from Pigna) with some bit of fish—not sure what—and some crisp prosciutto, ravioli filled with lamb with fava beans and asparagus puree, Italian salted cod (baccala) with fish tripe and white asparagus, roasted pork loin. I am sure I forgot something. The food was amazing. Gabriele picked a nice bottle of Primitivo and a nice Slovenian Merlot. 

I’ve eaten at Pane e Acqua three times and have yet to order.

I am looking forward to my next trip to Milano. Most of my memorable dinners have been in Milano. Gabriele and the others in the office make sure I am well fed. Last weekend I went to a restaurant that specializes in mozzarella, with Stefano and other friends. It was unbelievable. So simple and so good. Next time I will take photos so Barb will be happy!

Thanks, Paul. Irony is, Paul is a fantastic photographer, clearly too happy with his meals to bother to shoot them at Pane e Acqua. So I trolled the internet for help. If you really want a photo-tour, try Gourmantic.com. They must have paid their photographer not to eat.

I am reading Tattoos on the Heart with tears in my eyes, every chapter. Maybe it’s because I’m fifty-five. Maybe it’s because I know humankind can be kind. Maybe it’s one of those exceedingly rare stories of raising hearts into hope in the midst of a seemingly hopeless situation. Or maybe I just love bread.

Father Greg Boyle planted himself in a tough barrio in Los Angeles many years ago, and like any good Jesuit, he let the sisters in his parish whip up a community salad of caring. Gang activity was overtaking their ‘hood, but these women were mothers with Jesus in their hearts. Whatever the trauma, they were mammas. And mammas didn't close their church's doors to sorrow, violence, poverty or fear.

Two decades later, Homeboy Industries is one result, a place where former gang members can learn a trade, lose tattoos and bake and serve sourdough bread. Father Boyle masterminded this gang intervention program, touring and talking about his work to raise awareness and funds.

If you need a steady dose of goodness, let G-dog give you a tour of his calling among the stressed and oppressed. He believes so strongly in the power of god's unconditional love, that he can hold that space and wait for gangbangers to come into the grace of it. He knows they can come into the grace of it. I love this book for precisely that, Boyle's snapshots of the infallible power of “not two.”*

My favorite quote so far: “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a covenant between equals.”

Driving a back road to Rocky Mountain National Park last week with dog and boyfriend, gaping at the rural scenes, I saw this devilishly handsome baby with its feet to the clouds

        
and I shouted STOP!


Have you ever seen such
surrender to place? Do you have
any doubts a happy family resides
at this farm?



Walking on a beach in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a decade back, I came across the most striking sand drawing: a pure large circle which became, on closer inspection, a smiling woman with her legs and arms thrown up over her head, split open to the joys of the oncoming tide. She was naked.

I still remember that drawing and smile in wonder.

Who made these crazy sandstone eggs?

An artist in Lyons, Colorado, smitten with place.

Who knew lilac trees in China have coppery peeling bark?

The gardener who planted one in Boulder, Colorado.

What does your postal carrier see when approaching your place? A box this grand?!

Cheryl Crow’s “And This Is Home” sang itself in my head all the way to the Stanley Hotel at the outskirts of Rocky Mountain National Park. Sleet descended. Too early for a tourist’s drive through, and so we turned around. “This Must Be The Place” by the Talking Heads accompanied our U-turn, and the lovely drive on back roads to Boulder. (“Pick me up and turn me 'round…”)

Do a sexy lamp dance. Find your own way home. If you don't love the human race, watch these music videos and you may. Be smitten. With our time and our place.

It's all home.