-
Clean Shirt, Polished Steel: The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride
I learned how to dress when I was sixteen while working after school at a men’s clothing store. The sales staff included four men and one woman, and I was there through a high school distributive education program that paid an hourly wage while teaching sales skills. The owner and senior associates were good mentors.…
-
A Northwoods Practice of Stillness, Light, and Listening: When Small is Beautiful
Stories Emerge Like Bears is a forthcoming lyric memoir by Gregory Ormson, set in a Northwoods cabin where attention, labor, and place shape a life lived at human speed. To practice attention at human speed means allowing awareness to be shaped by physical work, stillness, and the act of receiving what arrives, rather than forcing…
-
Prime the Pump: What a Northwoods Cabin Taught Me About Learning and Attention
To get anything from my students I had to prime the pump. They were just like the pump, squeaking and whining before finally being coaxed out of their shells to participate.
-
Stories Emerge Like Bears A Book Announcement
I’ve signed with Cornerstone Press to publish my lyric memoir Stories Emerge Like Bears Begins at a cabin without running water. You take hold of the red handle and work the pump. At first, there’s only sound, then rhythm takes hold and the water rises. I learned this by doing it at a place where…
-
Toward a Yoga Presence:
What is often called “presence” in yoga is not a fleeting mental state. It is a disciplined relational stance. Presence can be practiced whether we are in a room with others or alone in our homes. The relational state of presence cannot be taught, it cannot be rushed, it cannot be summoned by instruction; but…
-
Why Liturgist of the Land
A Single Work Completed Does anyone experience a single work completed? A work done so perfectly that nothing more needs to be added or taken away. In my recent lyric essay “Liturgist of the Land: A Single Work Completed,” the entire meditation turns on four actions. They form the simplest structure of labor I have…
-
Slow Burn of a Yogi’s Becoming Milestones to 800 Hot Yoga Classes
Photos below from this slow burn of a yogi’s becoming; the teachers and leaders for 100-800. In yoga tradition, the therapeutic of mind, body, and spirit forges the slow burn of a yogi’s becoming: connections move the yogi to relinquishment where they learn to get out of the head, and move from their center moment…
-
Why “Liturgist of the Land: A Single Work Completed” Matters
Dig.Dump.Bury.Cover. Sometimes a piece of writing begins with an image that won’t leave . . . with fish remains buried in a deep hole. In “Liturgist of the Land: A Single Work Completed,” It was simple and exact: a gravedigger finishing the work in a deliberate sequence: Dig. Dump. Bury. Cover. Nothing added for appearance,…
-
“Liturgist of the Land: A Single Work Completed”
Originally published in Flash the Court, March 2026 Read the full essay at Flash the Court Liturgist of the Land: A Single Work Completed Look around. People are constantly checking their cell phones. Something must be left undone. A complete fucking incompleteness, a permanent, angst-driven scratch. Sisyphus whined, “In this rhythm, I am caught.”…
-
At the Edge of Pain Yoga, Breath, and the Art of the Turn
After years of back injury and persistent pain, I found myself practicing yoga at the edge of pain. Through spinal movement, breath, and restraint, I began learning how to remain and find a way to do more than endure. Over time, it reshaped physical capacity and the way stress is met in everyday life. Originally…
Got any book recommendations?