outside
May 6th, 2021 | Uncategorized
While it’s lovely to get to talk to Terry Gross, and to have my book written about in The New Yorker, I have to say I am super excited to get a write-up on Outside magazine’s website. I’ve been reading Outside for years, since the olden times when it was a higher-brow version of Men’s Health, all bros skiing off cliffs. Now they actually have a lesbian columnist, Grace Perry, and I love what she says about The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
6 Responses to “outside”
It’s great to see you out and about and participating in the Zeitgeist again. I suspect that you are, at best, ambivalent about doing the publicity for the new book. Know that your loyal fanbase appreciates the effort. If you’re lucky SSS won’t balloon into a cultural phenomenon, and soon you’ll be able to return to your comfortable Vermont obscurity, your Lynsky, and (in a few months) your skis.
Yes I hugely appreciate the effort, Dirk, both of the generous and illuminating interviews and of the ten years’ work of producing SSS.
I’m taking the book page by page, morning by morning, grateful for the almost midsummer light here to appreciate each one, and the unaccustomed space to absorb and reflect on all the puzzles and paradoxes. Particularly delighted to encounter a reminder of the Diamond Sutra, which gave me my user name here!
On the subject of loosening the grip of self in the flow of work, and of living with the reality of ageing, illness and death, here’s a very disarming little conversation between Jon Snow and David Hockney. Also a radiant glimpse of Hockney’s astonishing lockdown series at the Royal Academy:
The Arrival of Spring
…and on that note I’ll mention (courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac) that today, 11May, is the anniversary of the printing of The Diamond Sutra, in 868CE.
(Printed with carved blocks, it is the earliest document for which we have an exact date for its printing.)
This right here exemplifies why I love this blog community so much, and have since its yester years.
Hi Alison, I just finished reading your new book and I love it 🙂 I read all of your stuff within the last 30 years.
Didn’t know there were Vitaparcs in the US. We in Germany have them as “Trimm-Dich-Pfad”. I often did one when I was a child. German wikipedia says the first one in Germany was in 1962, so I’m not sure who invented the whole thing. Swiss Vita Zurich Insurance Group started it in 1968.
Hope your fine!
Greetings from Germany to Vermont!
Lea
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/sports/vitaparcours-parcourses-switzerland-coronavirus.html
Hope this isn’t off-topic, but I was very sad to hear of the death of Alix Dobkin at the age of eighty. Still sounds glorious after all these years:
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