What a simple tree-buying expedition can reveal! My sweetheart and I drove a bunch of hot dry miles to Copperton, on Friday, to pick out a Japanese Maple to flank our front porch. We hopped into the golf buggy provided by the wholesale nursery, and drove to the J. Maple section. No Home Depot maple mutt for us, we’d decided to treat ourselves to a genuinely lovely tree.

All of the trees on hand looked picked over, stunned and stunted with September heat, all but one grouping. It was a type of Japanese Maple we’d never seen before: Sumi Nagashi. Yes, they were expensive with large root balls in twenty-gallon containers. And beautifully pruned, with just the multi-trunk bodies we’d envisioned for our tree. Some local designer who used them with delight had ordered them in, and then the economy trembled.

We circled the Sumi specimens, all with outward-arching branches so slender they suggested bamboo. Airy leaves. Promise of great red color in spring. One tree in particular stopped our discouraged rummaging. Any tree that can sit on a wind-swept graveled desert floor when it’s ninety-four degrees in September and look fresh as Betty Grabel—well, our choice was made for us.

At home, I looked up Sumi Nagashi on Google. Lo and behold, the tree gets its name from the delicate art of Japanese paper marbling. Translated literally, Sumi Nagashi means "floating ink." You’ve heard of Sumi-e ink? Well, swirl colored ink in water and lay paper onto the patterns you create, and you have Sumi Nagashi. (I may have left out a few details and centuries of mastery!) The Japanese art of paper marbling is the oldest on the planet. I remember admiring books from Japan with marbled paper when I was a kid. We owned a few. I took one to "show and tell" in third grade. The fascination was strong then as now.

The naming of our tree after this art bodes well for us next spring! The delicacy we intuited in the young tree we chose won’t just fill a blank space in our garden. It will magnetize energy. Announce and welcome the beauty of the natural world. Which is the world that we all love, know it or not. Honor it or not. Admit it into our deepest knowing or forget our generous birthright.

Trees are a form of love that beggars words. And still we try.


Special thanks to The Garden at honeybrook house cottage for the lovely tree photo!

1. The score. Soundtracks usually annoy me, intruding into the story and very often being expected to tell the story. This time, the music enhanced everything. Sadly, M.I.A's upbeat song "Boyz" which MAKES the cab ride scene is not included in the soundtrack. In fact, most of what I loved didn't make it into the soundtrack. Which is one reason to go see the movie.

2. The cab ride in India feels like a cab ride in India.

3. The fan blades whirring, turning the wheel of story. The wheel of life.

4. Two strong men. I simply love spending time in their company. Full-grown men are rare in films and mainly in life, too. As follows:

5. Texas. I love his plaid shorts and plastic glasses and determination to make good his formerly rancid life. By paying attention. By taking time. By letting go of almost unforgivable deeds. He gives a helluva gift on that rooftop.

6. Felipe. Yes, yes, Bardem is gorgeous. But it’s the interaction with his son (OK make that THREE strong men) that puts him in our hearts front and center. The man loves his son. Their tenderness reads very real to me. You know bundles about Felipe watching him be with his son.

7. Honestly, after the three great men, here’s the best thing. Sitting in the dark watching some other woman try to lift out of her romantic confusions. It’s heartening not to be Liz and to hear her yell at Felipe, I won’t love you to prove I love myself. Or something close to that. It’s bloody hard being a full-grown woman who does not give too much. And just when you become that woman, life asks you to open up again.

8. “Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, so had no preconceptions about what the movie should or should not be.

I’m going out on a ledge here. When asked, “What is your favorite spiritual movie?” I have to admit a gaping chasm opened, and hence the ledge in front of me. Moviemakers don’t often grapple with how their films can suggest the profoundly wonderful.

So I gave myself time. And while my own inquiring mind circled back, I asked friends the same question. What is your favorite spiritual movie? The first person said without any hesitation, “Midnight Cowboy.” Which makes me want to see this film again! A friend of hers said, “The Big Lebowski.” Goodness, people are interesting.

I read lists of spiritual movies online, to see if that would inspire. The obvious titles don’t stir me. So the next question became, “What is spiritual?” I believe the answer is another question: “What moves you beyond yourself?”

In this spirit, a few movies have come to mind. “Enchanted April,” in which four soggy disillusioned British women choose love. In Italy. And I don’t mean escapist love. They take their dreary lives and infuse new life into them. They make what they have bloom. (I am strongly influenced in this by Elizabeth von Arnim's great novel Enchanted April. Some call it fluff, but I would ask them to take their dreary lives and embrace them into beauty.)

“Wit,” a one-woman show starring Emma Thompson, requires no distractions and allows for none. The entire movie takes place in a hospital room. An academic is dying of ovarian cancer, accompanied mainly by her own clear memories of her life and all its distances. An unflinching overview of a life, given final “simplicity and kindness.” This film will move you beyond your everyday self.

But I am choosing “Ponette,” a quiet French film featuring a four-year-old girl coming to grips with the death of her mother. Transcendent in the most grounded way. You will see life through Ponette's eyes.

What movies do you value as spiritual pole stars? What leads you beyond yourself? What lifts you out of worldly constraints awhile?

Thanks to Matt at Spiritual Media Blog for suggesting this topic! Leave comments with your favorite spiritual movies, and we'll tune in.

1. Selling novels is like pushing wet cement up a slide.

2. Truckers are avid readers.

3. The best carrot cake in the Intermountain West is at the TA Travel Center truck stop restaurant in Boise, Idaho. Ask for Mike.

4. Love is patient and kind.

5. You can simultaneously not care at all about the ultimate outcome of your crazy tour, and crave big results. Being a writer, I am used to such dichotomies.

6. The trunk of your car is not a bad place to sell books.

7. There are truckers who only manage to get home one day per month.

8. Trucker couples rock. I met a dog trucker who’d been on the road nearly a decade with his driver partner. Woof!

9. We all love listening to someone read aloud.

10. Wet cement continues to interest me.

You never know where a Truck Stop Tour will take you. I had the superb good fortune to be hosted by three amazing artists while on the road. Each artist gave me food for the soul, especially since I am a landscape junky. Now you can enjoy their work, too.

Wherever Jeanne Rogers moves, she transforms her garage into a painting studio. And I mean transform. Windows appear, skylights land, sconce lighting illuminates, and a wild flowing garden beats against the siding reminding you this woman never works cut off from nature. I’ve never met such a talented painter and gardener. Her Blue Oat Grass is five feet tall! Enjoy her paintings at Jeanne Rogers Studio.

Patrick Gracewood, a brilliant sculptor, has both feet in the dirt. He sculpts for gardens. And he gardens with heavenly passion. Check out his light-filled rambunctious studio. 

If you ever need a statue or bas relief panel to anchor some part of your landscape, Patrick’s your man. Even if you have no garden, Patrick’s your man. Peace radiates from his pieces. 

You may find you need one in your house! Browse his website and read a few blogs.You’ll get the million-dollar heart tour at Patrick Gracewood Studio. 

The fancy grounds of Elk Rock Gardens, perched above the Willamette River in Portland, do not hold a candle to napping in Wendy Street’s backyard in the shade of a slender Italian Cypress, and watching Tripod the Cat stalk her luscious garden on his three intrepid legs.

You can’t do that, my friends, but you can go get a massage from her at Innerweave, the studio where she practices the high art of hands-on healing. Wendy massages you like you are a garden.

I hope you enjoy these artists’ work. The Innerweave mission statement speaks to all three: Our goal is the practice of peaceful action, by being more compassionate, more respectful and more genuine… We believe that by becoming more adept at peaceful skills such as these, we contribute to peace in our world. 

Just look at TriPod contributing peace!

You may never have heard of Bikers Against Child Abuse. I hadn’t, until I drove past a rally in Tooele, Utah, and turned the car around and stopped. About a hundred men and women and their handsome machines milled around a deli parking lot. Every rider had a B.A.C.A. patch blazoned across their backs. They were happy and they were proud.

I only had a chance to talk with a few men before the pack drove off, inviting them to my Truck Stop reading in Tooele on July 23rd. They said they’d spread the word. My friend Carolyn bought a black B.A.C.A. T-shirt with skulls and wings on the chest. I thought that we were through.

But Carolyn mulled over that meeting. And I went online to the B.A.C.A. website to find out about their work. I watched two great videos, one short, one long. I sent Carolyn their beautiful, powerfully written creed. And she said, “Make sure they come to your reading. They’re protecting kids and your book’s about a neglected kid. It’s a perfect match.”

So I called the Tooele chapter and extended another welcome. On July 23rd—the night of my first Truck Stop Reading—twenty minutes before we began, a strong kind man in black said, “You must be Barbara,” and I threw my arms around him and said, “B.A.C.A.’S here!”

I read their creed aloud, to kick off the reading. And handed out B.A.C.A. decals. I read Guest House to two B.A.C.A. riders, one truck driver, the family of the restaurant manager who’d come to listen, and eighteen of my friends. It was a glorious night.

Then Clutch and Droopy, the B.A.C.A. dudes, let me take a few shots with them and their bodacious bikes. And for the grand finale, we drove off into the sunset together, Guest House, Droopy, Clutch and I.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I was so grateful for the long arms of men like that who care for children they’ve never even met because the children need their strength and their numbers. You find me a group with better intentions in this our day and age, and I’ll invite them to my next reading.

Thanks, B.A.C.A. My only regret is I did not buy a T-shirt. The v-neck one with red piping. Size small. Next time.

FROM THE BACA CREED:

I am a member of Bikers Against Child Abuse…

My past has prepared me, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by the faith in my works, and lean on the strength of my brothers and sisters. I love with patience, live by prayer, and labor with power.

My fate is set, my gait is fast, my goal is the ultimate safety of children.

Here’s a thought. Let’s all be grown-ups, the best and brightest kind. Beaten by circumstance and beleaguered by time, we ask pretty much every day how that is possible. Some days hold more success than others. Or is it all success?

To be a grown-up (of the best and brightest kind) you must first perform the miracle of loving yourself. This is rarely easy. It gets to the trembly, unsure deeps of you which would rather be undiscovered. Unexposed. Truly, you can try on thousands of pairs of low-rise jeans or start a few dozen non-profit organizations to lift up the world, mark out your romantic boundaries with a giant red Sharpie, or give your kids every gizmo known to marketingkind. Nothing, none of this contributes one iota to self-love. Praying to god misses the point, too. Divine beings and stylin’ clothes and handsome giving paw at the hope of love, but really, genuinely, you need to have a quiet talk with you.

It could take years.

Activity masks uncertainty. And you can mask-up your entire life. (I've tried, and been so puzzled at the ratty outcomes.) You can die as uninformed as you came into the world. More uninformed! Because you’ve swallowed the ignorance of what’s supposedly important and chased its tail like a rescue dog on adoption day. A busy dog (expecting no answer) might ask, What else is there?

Basic to you, at the core of you, and you can find it, is a pool of open being. You get to draw from this pool any time, everywhere. Yes, you may have specifically curly hair or a limp in your walk or a constant tendency to lose your glasses—and you also have a limitless foundation of untrammeled good.

How you contact that good and draw it up with pleasure like fresh well water every day is a powerful question. It can transform your sense of self and deliver you to joy. The more you let the well water refresh you, even for seconds in a day, the calmer your tempests of avoidance/grasping/hate become. Your sense of self will gentle and grow wide and welcoming. You are good and can know it.

You cannot avoid death, ill health, loss of friends. You can avoid being and loving yourself. Please don’t. Be an adult. The best and brightest kind. Which has nothing to do with appearances and everything to do with accepting your beautiful place here as you.

Once you love yourself, limitations which seem to keep you cut off from life’s bounty will frustrate you far less. You won’t be hoodwinked by their glossy offers. You will know you are great and thus have to prove it to no one. You can relax.

Good things, great things, interconnected things will rally round you. Even if they appear to be failures. Every failure is a step on the path to success.

And you know what? Love attracts love.

There are nice guys in this crazy publishing world, and Jesse Kornbluth is one of them. Big time. 

Thanks to Ben Fulton, Salt Lake Tribune writer, for the full-page feature article this Sunday! What a great blast-off for the Truck Stop Tour, which starts in Salt Lake City on July 23. Fulton says:

"When writer Barbara Richardson discovered that the previous owner of a home she’d just bought committed suicide in the garage, she did what she thought was natural. She decided to write a book.

'She wasn’t able to make the house joyful, but I decided I would do that.'

By Richardson’s admission, she failed miserably. Three 'training wheel' books went nowhere. She broke up with her partner, then sold the house.

A move back to Salt Lake City afterward put her right where she wanted to be..."

Read the entire article READ FOR THE ROAD, in which Fulton says "GUEST HOUSE is perhaps the most rapid-fire novel of domestic hope and strife you’re likely to read all summer." Post a comment to let the Trib know you love good books and peach pie.

Read more about the TRUCK STOP TOUR, likely the only literary truck stop tour in history!

On May 24, tree limbs all over my neighborhood were in real trouble. They hovered at eye-level, weighted with snow from a freak spring storm. That late in May, the street trees had leafed out full, and the wet weight of snow had disfigured linden, ash and the maple tree in my front yard. Two torn limbs blocked the sidewalk, wedged downward like open hands. I pushed and pulled—they were too tall for me to drag out of the way. I would have to cut the network of branches in order to clear a path.

Let me tell you about the danger of the Mistaken World.

I have two women living inside of me. One is young and sprightly, competent and eager; she flies about fixing, creating, solving and doing for others. Once in motion, the Project Manager finds it nearly impossible to stop. Exhaustion stops her. Felled limbs under heavy unexpected snow. She feels torn and confused by the destruction that comes, every time, as a result of too much work, too much speed. Her body breaks down, her emotions follow. Hers is a Mistaken World. The world we make and read about in newspapers every morning. This is not the natural world. It is a manufactured freak snowstorm of activity we mistake, every day, for reality.

We may not recognize this world as mistaken, having rarely stepped outside of it.

The other woman in me lives quietly, a modest older sister who notes the beauty in limbs, green or bare, aloft or downed. I call her the Oldtimer. She is drawn into activity by what is around her, knowing that her main job, her heart job is to appreciate. She lives in the center. She waits to be led. She is not fooled by fury—furious accomplishment, furious acquisition, furious judgment, division, rejection or need. She smiles when her eyes open on May 24 to snow falling into her green maple tree. She sees the overweighting all down the street. She hopes for the least disfigurement of these grand shade trees.

Then she gets out her hand saw to clear a path.

We choose to inhabit the Mistaken World until it inhabits us. We’re blinded to our own very direct access to wisdom. We look to others, to churches, to Wall Street, to Google and e-zines. We accept the overweighting—as if human industry excused every stupidity, every wound inflicted, every lost limb. Mistakes en masse create misery. We all feel it. We fear and worry over it. We even despair there’s little we can do. Recognizing the Mistaken World might seem to take us far in righting the wrong, but analyzing a problem usually increases the trance it holds over us. Would you stare down an angry rattler until it told you how to escape?

It is simpler and far more effective to ask how do we recognize the real world?

I can suggest ways, but only you will know how to get real:

Slow down.

Contact your heart.

Be grateful, and patient, so that what comes to you is enough.

Let everything around you speak its piece.

Listen.

Let slights move through you.

Stand up for beauty.

Sit down and wait.

Welcome the unknown.
Get old, whatever your age, get calm, get simple. Pay attention, Oldtimer. You are in this world to appreciate it. Appreciation is our native human state. 
Clear the decks for delight. Ask and you will receive.

Let’s get started.