Rituals

More than 150 inspired—and inspiring—novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians on how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do. Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” Kafka is one of 161 minds who describe their daily rituals to get their work done, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”.... Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day ... Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.” Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books ... Karl Marx ... Woody Allen ... Agatha Christie ... George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing ... Leo Tolstoy ... Charles Dickens ... Pablo Picasso ... George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.... Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).

This stirring collection presents spiritual rituals from around the world and offers guidance on bringing the powerful practices into modern life. Filled with fascinating details on the history and meaning behind a wide range of sacred rituals for love, awareness, joy, and so much more, this timeless handbook guides readers through more than 40 empowering practices—including a candlelight ritual for renewal, a soothing ritual for unwinding, and a tea ceremony for fostering connection and gratitude. With evocative watercolors throughout, this book is a lovely invitation to nourish the mind, body, and soul through enduring rituals for well-being.

In this book, Tracy Pintchman has assembled ten leading scholars of Hinduism to explore the complex relationship between Hindu women's rituals and their lives beyond ritual. The book focuses particularly on the relationship of women's ritual practices to domesticity, exposing and exploring the nuances, complexities, and limits of this relationship. In many cultural and historical contexts, including contemporary India, women's everyday lives tend to revolve heavily around domestic and interpersonal concerns, especially care for children, the home, husbands, and other relatives. Hence, women's religiosity also tends to emphasize the domestic realm and the relationships most central to women. But women's religious concerns certainly extend beyond domesticity. Furthermore, even the domestic religious activities that Hindu women perform may not merely replicate or affirm traditionally formulated domestic ideals but may function strategically to reconfigure, reinterpret, criticize, or even reject such ideals. This volume takes a fresh look at issues of the relationship between Hindu women's ritual practices and normative domesticity. In so doing, it emphasizes female innovation and agency in constituting and transforming both ritual and the domestic realm and calls attention to the limitations of normative domesticity as a category relevant to many forms of Hindu women's religious practice.

From Marx to Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, 'Daily Rituals' examines the working routines of more than a 160 of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived. Filled with fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining stories of the personalities behind it, it is irresistibly addictive and utterly inspiring

Amsterdam of the 50s, 60s and 70s is viewed from the perspective of Inni Wintrop, a man who leads a capricious life, floating comfortably on open possibilities.

I Love You Rituals offers more than seventy delightful rhymes and games that send the message of unconditional love and enhance children's social, emotional, and school success.Winner of a 1999 Parent's Guide Children's Media Award, these positive nursery rhymes, interactive finger plays, soothing games, and physically active can be played with children from infancy through age eight. In only minutes a day, these powerful rituals: Prime a child's brain for learning Help children cope with change Enhance attention, cooperation, and self-esteem Help busy families stay close Affirm the parent-child bond that insulates children from violence, peer pressure, and drugs, and much more. Easy to learn and especially effective in stressful situations, I Love You Rituals gives parents, grandparents, caregivers, and teachers inspiring tools to help children thrive.

More of Mason Currey's irresistible Daily Rituals, this time exploring the daily obstacles and rituals of women who are artists--painters, composers, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers, and performers. We see how these brilliant minds get to work, the choices they have to make: rebuffing convention, stealing (or secreting away) time from the pull of husbands, wives, children, obligations, in order to create their creations. From those who are the masters of their craft (Eudora Welty, Lynn Fontanne, Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie Curie) to those who were recognized in a burst of acclaim (Lorraine Hansberry, Zadie Smith) . . . from Clara Schumann and Shirley Jackson, carving out small amounts of time from family life, to Isadora Duncan and Agnes Martin, rejecting the demands of domesticity, Currey shows us the large and small (and abiding) choices these women made--and continue to make--for their art: Isak Dinesen, "I promised the Devil my soul, and in return he promised me that everything I was going to experience would be turned into tales," Dinesen subsisting on oysters and Champagne but also amphetamines, which gave her the overdrive she required . . . And the rituals (daily and otherwise) that guide these artists: Isabel Allende starting a new book only on January 8th . . . Hilary Mantel taking a shower to combat writers' block ("I am the cleanest person I know") . . . Tallulah Bankhead coping with her three phobias (hating to go to bed, hating to get up, and hating to be alone), which, could she "mute them," would make her life "as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water" . . . Lillian Hellman chain-smoking three packs of cigarettes and drinking twenty cups of coffee a day--and, after milking the cow and cleaning the barn, writing out of "elation, depression, hope" ("That is the exact order. Hope sets in toward nightfall. That's when you tell yourself that you're going to be better the next time, so help you God.") . . . Diane Arbus, doing what "gnaws at" her . . . Colette, locked in her writing room by her first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars (nom de plume: Willy) and not being "let out" until completing her daily quota (she wrote five pages a day and threw away the fifth). Colette later said, "A prison is one of the best workshops" . . . Jessye Norman disdaining routines or rituals of any kind, seeing them as "a crutch" . . . and Octavia Butler writing every day no matter what ("screw inspiration"). Germaine de Staël . . . Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . George Eliot . . . Edith Wharton . . . Virginia Woolf . . . Edna Ferber . . . Doris Lessing . . . Pina Bausch . . . Frida Kahlo . . . Marguerite Duras . . . Helen Frankenthaler . . . Patti Smith, and 131 more--on their daily routines, superstitions, fears, eating (and drinking) habits, and other finely (and not so finely) calibrated rituals that help summon up willpower and self-discipline, keeping themselves afloat with optimism and fight, as they create (and avoid creating) their creations.

A horror debut by one of Britain's most celebrated up-and-coming writers, in which four friends get lost in a forest in Sweden, to find their lives are in mortal peril... as something evil lurks.