Taking the Leap is an attempt by Pema to help us to learn how to look at our attachments and self-absorption. This little book is full of suggestions for how to work skillfully with our own blind spots. An attempt to look closely at how we are stuck in a narrow absorbed vision and offers ways to get unhooked.
By concentrating on the practice of staying present, we confront our own self-absorption, self-clinging ego, trying not to slip into habits of compulsion and distraction. Pema instructs that our time, that our basic intelligence, openness and warmth naturally interrupt the chain reactions of our ego attachments.
Pema suggests a formal practice for learning to stay with energy of uncomfortable emtions:
Step 1: Acknowledge you are hooked by self-absorption.
Step 2: Pause. Lean in to the energy. Experience it fully. Stay present. Interrupt the momentum.
Step 3: Relax and move on.
Pema’s gift to her readers is that she packs so much into her books and presents her lessons so clearly. Pema helps us defrost our windshield and to enhance our lives daily by trying to practice and understand the wisdom she shares.
As we change ourselves and our dysfumctional habits, we are simultaneously changing the world around us.
John came back from a short vacation and put a book of poetry on the desk for me to look at. It was Of This World by Joseph Stroud and oh what a stunning book of poetry this is! From his very brief poems to several amazing sustained contemplative poems, each deeply moving selection is a treat for one’s spirit. Each one begs to be read again—to savor, to examine.
The poem “Provenance”, selected for a Pushcart prize, was written after his father died. It speaks of grief and redemption:
‘I want to tell you the story of that winter
in Madrid where I lived in a room
with no windows, where I lived
with the death of my father, carrying it
everywhere through the streets…..”
In another poem he speaks of the time when he and his two brothers had come together to scatter his father’s ashes:
“A sudden wind
and the ashes gust back over us,
dusting our faces and clothes,
a faint smell and taste of my father in my own body….”
Can you imagine! How deep does one have to go to feel the power of this poem?
The entire volume is filled—as I said—with the most amazing poetry. It begs to be read slowly, letting the words and emotions wash over you once and then once again.
Robert Olen Butler will delight Jacksonians on Wednesday, September 30, at 5:30 p.m. when he reads from his new release Hell. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for the short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1993), Butler has accomplished quite a prolific list of published works: eleven novels, five short story collections, and a book on the creative process.
If there is one reading that Lemuria readers should attend this fall, this is it! How many opportunities does a person have to hear a Pulitzer Prize winner read? I really believe that this new release Hell will win another major award!
As this current novel Hell opens, the reader, who just thought he left Virgil and Beatrice in Hell in Dante’s “The Inferno”, is surprised as the two old friends appear again in well known territory. However, this novel is not a continuation of Dante’s classic…..far from it! The protagonist, a nightly news broadcaster named Hatcher McCord, who is a new arrival to Hell, is eager for an interview with the Devil with whom Hatcher will converse about his idea of roaming through Hell to interview celebrities.
There is one question which Hatcher can not seem to answer for himself and one which none of his interviewees can answer either, “Why are you here?” The reader quickly discovers that there is no end to the number of people who make their homes in Hell, and commit, of course, the same sins they were capable of on Earth. Pain and torture know no boundaries, the trick being that author Robert Olen Butler gives the devastation a comic flare. This book is not one, however, for the faint of heart. Explicit descriptions of all sorts of earthly sins appear and are described in x-rated detail, all serving to make the idea drive home: this is Hell, and to be avoided at all costs!
Hatcher’s girlfriend the ever popular beheaded Anne Boleyn, who often misplaces her head, invoking a sense of sadness and ennui when Hatcher arrives home and finds her headless once again, introduces the reader to the comic relief present throughout the novel. In fact, there were very few pages where I was not laughing out loud or reflecting on the incredibly talented use of irony. Some of the people whom Hatcher interviews, including Bill and Hillary, George W. , and Henry VIII, among many others, give both hilarious and mournful interviews, all coordinated by the manager J. Edgar Hoover.
Robert Olen Buter writing Hell
Some of the favorite spots in Hell like the famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, or Starbacks, or McDonald’s add interest for the reader and give a way for the introduction of writers such as Hemingway. The quick paced action speeds the reader along is made even quicker by the absence of true chapters, for why in the world, or in Hell, would there ever be such organization? Once the reader catches on to the fact, that specific, unadulterated symbolism in many venues reigns in this novel, then the flow and the magic start to happen and don’t stop. In fact, the reader can barely hang on with the fast paced action at certain points.
As the protagonist eagerly awaits the next “harrowing” and a chance to escape Hell, the reader gets caught up in this optimistic endeavor. The ending, not one to be let out of the box, I postponed and savored until I was ready, by saving the last ten pages until I could stand it no more. Never would I have guessed this ending, and yet, when I closed the book and reflected for a few minutes, I realized the unparalleled poignant close of this, one of my new favorite literary novels. This is a brilliantly written novel, and one of the funniest I have ever read. For a true look at the nature of mankind, this is it. Now I have another “hell” book to add to my list which includes Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Dante’s “The Inferno,” Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and many others. Robert Olen Butler’s Hell may very well become the twenty-first century’s answer to this genre.
Pulling from a sixty-year history, The National Book Award Foundation needs your vote in deciding the best book out of all the past winners of The National Book Award for Fiction. What is notable for Mississippians is that two of the six nominees are Mississippi authors: William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Furthermore, three of the six are southerners when Flannery O’Connor is added.
So let’s cast our vote! Choosing may be a tough choice, but casting your vote on The National Book Awards website is easy. Voting begins today and is open through October 21st.
Author Jon Krakauer’s own life is every bit as varied and exciting as those he writes about. He is the author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven and his latest book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. Jon Krakauer was born in 1954, and in addition to being a writer, he is also a mountaineer and well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing. It was his father who introduced him to mountaineering when he was eight-years-old. Into the Wild was published in 1996 and shortly thereafter spent two years on The New York Times bestseller list. The book tells the true story of Christopher McClandess, a young man from a well-to-do east coast family who, after graduating from college, began a journey in the American west. Nearly two years later, McCandless was found dead in the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer additionally recounts the story of Everett Ruer, a young artist and wanderer who disappeared in the Utah desert in 1934 at age 20. Into The Wild was adapted into a film, starring Sean Penn.
In May 1996 Krakauer reached the top of Mt. Everest, but during the descent a storm engulfed the peak, taking the lives of four of the five teammates who climbed to the summit with him. The unsparingly honest book he subsequently wrote in 2007 about Everest, Into Thin Air, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. It was also honored as the “Book of the Year” by Time magazine, citing “Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.”
In 2003, Under the Banner of Heaven became Krakauer’s third non-fiction bestseller. This book examines the extremes of religious belief, particularly fundamentalist offshoots of Mormanism and specifically looks at the practice of polygamy. As a child growing up in Oregon, many of Krakauer’s playmates, teachers, and athletic coaches were Latter-day Saints. Although he talks about how he envied the certainty of their faith, he was often baffled by it and sought to understand the power of such belief.
Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, his latest book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, chronicles the life and death of Pat Tillman who was an irrepressible individualist. In 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11 and felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He talked his brother Kevin into joining with him. Two years later, Pat died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan. It was obvious to most of the soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, but the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s family members and the American public for five weeks following his death.
Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan. Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about war. All his family wanted was the truth and it seems incredibly sad that they had to work so hard to get it. I found this to be a very sad book but an important one. As one of the investigators in this case said, “One of the things that make the Afghanistan and Iraq wars so different from previous wars is the glaring disparity of sacrifice. For the overwhelming number of Americans, this war has brought no sacrifice and no inconvenience, but for a small number of Americans, the war has demanded incredible and constant sacrifice.”
Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears 
John came back from a short vacation and put a book of poetry on the desk for me to look at. It was 
In 2003, Under the Banner of Heaven became Krakauer’s third non-fiction bestseller. This book examines the extremes of religious belief, particularly fundamentalist offshoots of Mormanism and specifically looks at the practice of polygamy. As a child growing up in Oregon, many of Krakauer’s playmates, teachers, and athletic coaches were Latter-day Saints. Although he talks about how he envied the certainty of their faith, he was often baffled by it and sought to understand the power of such belief.