Category Archives: attention

The force that through the green fuse…

Posted on April 18, 2018 by cheapskateintellectual

Pop quiz: I took the photo above on a) December 15 b) January 15 c) April 15 The answer, as anyone in the Upper Midwest can guess (channeling Prince) is C. And yet, despite more fierce thick snow today, it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, attention, Driftless region, mystery, seasons | Leave a comment

IPhone consciousness.

Posted on June 15, 2017 by cheapskateintellectual

Longtime Cheapskate readers, brace yourselves (or y’all’s selves) and check the temperature in hell: I’ve got a smartphone. An IPhone 7, safely encased in a red LifeProof jacket with a dorsal stripe of turquoise (exactly like my front door; the … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, technology | 1 Comment

First clothesline day of 2016!

Posted on February 28, 2016 by cheapskateintellectual

Clotheslining is a big deal here in Cheapskate-Intellectual-land, so the first warm and windy day is a big deal too.  As soon as I saw the sun and smelled the breeze, I knew it was time.  So familiar and delightful … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, home, seasons | 2 Comments

Ownlife vs. Internet?

Posted on November 15, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

“…at the same time I felt so strongly the pull of another thing, a thing having to do with music, freedom, the future, individuality.  This is an important reason why I became a writer, I think, for in everything I … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, corporations, technology | 3 Comments

Harpooning the comet.

Posted on November 13, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

Struggling to absorb the wondrousness of Philae, the observatory device shot into space this week to stick to and photograph a comet, I can only fasten on the verb: harpooning.  It’s a suitable invocation of an attempt to fasten ourselves … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, mystery, technology | 3 Comments

If that don’t beet all…

Posted on October 22, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

Benjamin Franklin once remarked, “Experience is a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other.”  Put another way, knowledge can be expensive, but a little pain can make it stick.   Put a third way, I will never again … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, attention, food, gardening, self-reliance | Leave a comment

Yo, Thoreau.

Posted on June 23, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, conservation, politics, self-reliance, technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Dreams of sun.

Posted on May 2, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

There’s a particular kind of sleep that waits for you when you’ve been outside working all day, especially in a garden: a kind of heavy, instant falling-off that nevertheless feels light, as if your sleep-sodden body might lift and rise … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, gardening, mystery, seasons, spirit | 4 Comments

The twentysomething brain (and beyond.)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

(from my manuscript-in-progress) Significantly, Buddhists call looking at an object or emotion steadily for some time and processing the emotions that arise “sustaining the gaze.”  The ability to “sustain the gaze” without distraction from within or without is the ability … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, home, money, resilience, stuff, technology | 6 Comments

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