Rose Cantine

Bathroom scales are useless. Worse, they are dangerous to your emotional well-being. If you own one, here’s why you should toss it out.
(1) Weight is nothing more than a convention used by humans on Earth to denote the the force they are exerting — in this case, on a bathroom scale — due to the [...]

While others are making lists of New Year’s resolutions, I have only one: simplicity. I used to make lists of resolutions. It seemed comforting and the thing to do. But lists of resolutions have become nothing more than yet another to-do list in a world of too many things to do. What’s needed isn’t another [...]

From The Spirituality of Art:
Imagination draws its energy from a confrontation with desire. It feeds off desire, transmuting and magnifying reality through desire’s power. Fantasy does the opposite; it avoids desire by fleeing into a crude sort of wish-fulfillment that seems much safer. Fantasy might be teddy bears, lollipops, sexual delights, or superhero adventures; it [...]

The quality of life in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, around the Embarcadero and South Beach, has improved dramatically since the closure of the Bay Bridge. Traffic is non-existent and for people who live near the bridge, hanging out on the balcony and opening windows means not having to listen to the constant buzz [...]

I promised to elaborate further on my ten worthwhile summer projects, the no. 1 project being “Meditate”. How do you get started? What is it? And for the more curious, how do you find out more about Buddhism?
I have listed several online resources for meditation instructions and Buddhist teachings. However, there’s no substitute for showing [...]

It’s funny how American conservatives get all it all wrong about the British NHS or any other country’s “socialized” medicine. They’ve been calling it a disaster but it works quite well, as Stephen Amidon, an American writer living in Britain, recently wrote in Salon:
“This, I learned, is what the NHS is about — common decency. It [...]

It’s summer, the perfect time to embark on a project that will take two months. The idea is to nourish your creative and spiritual life, and integrate it with your physical health, not just this summer but throughout your existence. Here are my top 10 summer projects. I will talk about each one in greater [...]

I wrote this poem on a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to Washington DC. It’s not Wordsworth, but I thought I’d take a stab at celebrating National Poetry Month with some verse.
The ATM
A woman pulls cash out of a wall
The sirens scream as the heavens fall
Helicopter Ben drops money from the sky
Far away in [...]