Nice Meditation

I wanted to pray and meditate this afternoon at 1 as my daughter was getting ready to start an important interview. I chanted, lit candles, prayed and meditated for half an hour, getting up sometimes to do a walking meditation down my hallway. Afterwards I finished up my Starbucks coffee and did 20 minutes on the treadmill at my rec center. I'm starting Summer of Hate by Chris Kraus which seems interesting. Her writing is very good although the book seems a little strange to me. But sometimes strange stories are good. I've been happy about my luck in finding most of the books I want to read at the Multnomah County library. Books can be expensive and I like to keep my hobbies cheap.

More books

I just got finished with my Anam Cara women's group. It was wonderful. Mary shared that when she does collage she only uses one magazine and gives herself 20 minutes to get it done. I'm going to try timing myself when I do a collage again. I wanted to mention two books, Gifted by Nikita Lalwani and The Garden of Lost and Found by Dale Peck. Both are excellent and I was able to check both of them out at the Mult

nomah County library.

Try these

Last week I got through two excellent books. They are Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee and Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones. I picked both of them up at the library. I've been listening to podcasts and looking at other blogs such as dodi-bellamy to find ideas for titles to read. I find I love reading and then writing or journaling about what they make me think about or how I feel about the stories.

I have started reading a lot in between writing spurts. This week I read Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk and Kobo Abe's The Ark Sakura. I read not only for the story but to enjoy the writers style and learn from it. I've been spending hours reading and writing and the day flows in such an enjoyable pattern. I've also been checking out blogs. Try bomblog. Also I find the New Yorker Podcasts

to be very good.