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Pressed Shirt, Polished Steel: The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride
I learned how to dress-up when I was sixteen while working after school at a men’s clothing store in my hometown. The sales staff included four men and one woman. I was there through a highschool distributive education program that paid the state hourly wage ($1.10 at that time) while teaching sales skills. The owner…
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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. Snowmelt drips from the roof. I watch long enough to feel the pace of winter loosening its grip, giving itself to spring. The water drips without…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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“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.”…
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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…
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