Looking For Beauty, Walking Backward, And Much More
August is still summer … but barely.
Dear Writers,
Just in the nick of time, your July newsletter! Wait, what? July is over? How?!!?! Has your summer been speeding by as fast as mine has? I am breathless at the pace of these past eight weeks. Or maybe I’m breathless from the January 6 hearings. Or both. There’s never, it seems lately, a shortage of ways to lose one’s breath.
That said, I’m making a practice of seeking—and finding, as best I can—beauty in the world. Indeed, I am considering following in Ross Gay’s footsteps down a path of delight. In his beautiful Book of Delight’s, Gay writes:
“I came up with a handful of rules: write a delight every day for a year; begin and end on my birthday, August 1; draft them quickly; and write them by hand. The rules made it a discipline for me. A practice. Spend time thinking and writing about delight every day.”
My birthday is not August 1, but my son’s is! So, as good a time to begin as any. Some say that our job in dark times is to actively notice l…