Inside the Flame: The Joy of Treasuring What You Already Have

Inside the Flame invites readers to unplug their computers, cell phones, and televisions and plunge back into overlooked nooks and crannies of everyday experience. We've lost touch with the richness of the tangible and with it our reverence for the physical world. Our ability to focus on the here and now is in crisis. By illuminating ways to take a closer look at the world around, Inside the Flame will help readers heighten their surroundings, tune the volume more precisely, and live lives that are fuller, richer, more mindful, and more compassionately interwoven with others. Inside the Flame illustrates how attentive experience brings the world close, and how the world responds by infusing us with bold colors, memorable textures, and a more widely open heart.

Introduction


Part One: How We Touch the World


Grasp: The Right Fit

Moving: Higher, Faster, Farther

Extreme Play

Collecting

Petting Cats

Oral Fixations


Oral Mysteries


Extreme Flavors


Flavor Collisions

Exploring

Color Wheel: the Magenta Jacket
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Acts of Renewal: Meditations of the Hand


Folding Clothes


Ironing Meditation


Transformative Dusting


Putting on Makeup

Shape Shifting: Baking Bread


Personal Shape Shifting

Space Programs


Expanding the body: Favorite Clothing


Decorating Space

Space Shifting

Dining by Candlelight

Rites of Memory

Seasonal Flavors

Making Mud Pies

Lost or Found

Hero Mom


Part 2: How the World Touches Us

The Seasons

Climbing Amboy Crater

The Gravity of Dawn

Sonic Transport

Kissing

Eye Candy

Swimming in the Rain

Management Issues

Sensory Joy

Textures

Aromas


Crushing Bay Leaves


The bicyclist and the French Lavender


Russian Leather: my mother's perfume

Impressions

Discomfort Zones

Freestyle Craftiness

Visual Intimacy: Mirrors

Touched Back


Toxic Snow


Innocent Leg and Jumping Cholla


Attack of the yellow jackets

Handwriting

Walking


Pogonip


Island in the Sky

Fridays on Westcliff

Loss: Ceremonies of Death

Loss Transformed

Magnify This


Part 3: Inside the Flame

A Well-Made Home

Ordinary Objects

Music Recaptured

Something from Nothing

Telescopes

Defining Moments

Too-Near and No-Where


The Space of Mid-Air


Too-close Encounters


The Overwhelmingly Generic


The New and Unknown

Going to Extremes

Defining Moments: Diving through the Waves

Watching Movies, Extending Space

Defining Moments: Flying with my Father

Painting the Rock

Uncurated Keepsakes

Connective Tissues

Defining Moments: Grand Canyon Sunset

Defining Moments: The Rain Forest

Defining Moments: Tree Falling on Car

Sensory Webs

Defining Moments: Brahms in London

All Roads Lead to Home