Category Archives: art

The arts, for real.

Posted on March 28, 2017 by cheapskateintellectual

So. They want to cut the arts. Just something else for the talking heads to get worked up about. Just another aspect of someone else’s lifestyle luxuries you’re being expected to support. Except it’s not. You’re driving home at the … Continue reading →

Posted in art, culture, spirit | 1 Comment

The angels of Bread Loaf.

Posted on June 7, 2015 by cheapskateintellectual

All around me in the half-light of thirty thousand feet, people abandon themselves to sleep: mouths slack as babies’, heads lolled back. A brown-skinned woman in a pale turban dozes under an airline blanket that in this light is startling … Continue reading →

Posted in art, community, gratitude, spirit, writing | 6 Comments

“Learn, little cousin:” Seeing with Signorelli.

Posted on December 14, 2013 by cheapskateintellectual

Something about Christmas mixes emotion and memory like no other time.  This is the hinge of the year, the liminal space where we could step one way or another way, where we can and can’t see what’s coming.  Where we … Continue reading →

Posted in art, body, culture, mystery, spirit, the past | Leave a comment

Let there be light.

Posted on November 16, 2013 by cheapskateintellectual

On an ordinary November afternoon I sit on a chair in my eye doctor’s dim exam room, chin in the camera-machine, straining not to blink against the stinging dilation drops leaking through my lashes.  A white flash jolts straight to … Continue reading →

Posted in art, attention, body, mystery, spirit, teaching, travel | 1 Comment

Essentializing the animal: owls, war horses, and poetry.

Posted on April 28, 2013 by cheapskateintellectual

Coming out of my office late this afternoon, I spotted a barred owl up in a tree outside the building, hunched against the trunk, squinching his eyes against the light and stoically standing off a pair of crows who were … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, art, attention, body, mystery | 1 Comment

Your native town, and the world.

Posted on February 4, 2013 by cheapskateintellectual

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires … Continue reading →

Posted in art, self-reliance, spirit, teaching, the past, travel, writing | 1 Comment

The humility wheel.

Posted on September 3, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

Pottery class, day three. Clay in hair.  Clay in eyelashes.  Clay on neck.  Clay on shirt and jeans.  Clay on sandals, tracked inadvertently across studio floor.  Clay deep in cuticles.  Hands and arms trembling when held out to examine clay … Continue reading →

Posted in art, attention, body, mystery, self-reliance | 3 Comments

Somebody made this: who?

Posted on August 29, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

This morning, I took my first-ever pottery class, in the spacious studio in our college’s arts center, with a generous colleague, George, and a large group of students, several of whom had been in my classes before. I’m here on … Continue reading →

Posted in art, attention, community, corporations, self-reliance, stuff, yoga | 2 Comments

A Cheapskate Romanticist abroad.

Posted on August 8, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

“Experience enlarges the space for the self to swim in.” – George Eliot, from a manuscript in “Writing Britain” at the British Library. A month of travel has left me with more than I can say, and more than I … Continue reading →

Posted in art, attention, mystery, Romanticism, self-reliance, teaching, the past, travel | 7 Comments

The earth’s thin skin.

Posted on March 21, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

This season of hesitant and lovely changes began with a scrim of ash that colors the skin underneath, that asks us to look and wait in the times of boredom and worry and anomie, because something more is coming.  It … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, art, attention, mystery, the past, writing | 8 Comments