Philip Simmons was just 35 years old when he learned he had Motor Neurone Disease, a fatal condition that usually kills its victims in two to five years, but which Philip has already well exceeded. With a strong marriage, two young children and the start of a promising literary and academic career, he suddenly had to say goodbye. But, by learning the art of dying he has succeeded, against the odds, in learning the art of living. In 12 chapters, this book tells the story of Philip's spiritual journey. Finding answers to life's deepest questions - and introducing a host of colourful characters along the way - Philip illustrates, above all, that we can learn to live lives of depth, compassion and courage no matter what life throws at us.

Learning to Fall : The Blessings of an Imperfect Life

Simmons, Philip

TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

Now I find myself in late August, with the nights cool and the crickets thick in the fields. Already the first blighted leaves glow scarlet on the red maples. It’s a season of fullness and sweet longings made sweeter now by the fact that I can’t be sure I’ll see this time of the year again.... — from Learning to Fall Philip Simmons was just thirty-five years old in 1993 when he learned that he had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and was told he had less than five years to live. As a young husband and father, and at the start of a promising literary career, he suddenly had to learn the art of dying. Nine years later, he has succeeded, against the odds, in learning the art of living. Now, in this surprisingly joyous and spirit-renewing book, he chronicles his search for peace and his deepening relationship with the mystery of everyday life. Set amid the rugged New Hampshire mountains he once climbed, and filled with the bustle of family life against the quiet progression of illness, Learning to Fall illuminates the journey we all must take — “the work of learning to live richly in the face of loss.” From our first faltering steps, Simmons says, we may fall into disappointment or grief, fall into or out of love, fall from youth or health. And though we have little choice as to the timing or means of our descent, we may, as he affirms, “fall with grace, to grace.” With humor, hard-earned wisdom and a keen eye for life’s lessons — whether drawn from great poetry or visits to the town dump — Simmons shares his discovery that even at times of great sorrow we may find profound freedom. And by sharing the wonder of his daily life, he offers us the gift of connecting more deeply and joyously with our own.

Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life

Parenting & Relationships

Bantam]

Biographies & Memoirs

Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Simmons, Philip (2002) Paperback

Hodder Headline Australia P/L

Learning to Fall

Xlibris, Corp.

Philip Simmons was just 35 years old when he learned he had Motor Neurone Disease, a fatal condition that usually kills its victims in two to five years, but which Philip has already well exceeded. With a strong marriage, two young children and the start of a promising literary and academic career, he suddenly had to say goodbye. But, by learning the art of dying he has succeeded, against the odds, in learning the art of living. In 12 chapters, this book tells the story of Philip's spiritual journey. Finding answers to life's deepest questions - and introducing a host of colourful characters along the way - Philip illustrates, above all, that we can learn to live lives of depth, compassion and courage no matter what life throws at us.

Deep Surfaces explores the relations between mass culture - especially as reflected in and perpetuated by film, television, and advertising - and historical thinking in the work of such contemporary American novelists as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow, Ishmael Reed, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Nicholson Baker. By considering mass culture from a postmodern theoretical perspective, Philip E. Simmons places his readings of fiction within a larger argument about how mass culture is shaping postmodern conditions of knowledge. In particular, Simmons shows how mass culture is related to the ways we construct and perceive history, and how certain developments in fiction mark the novel's participation in a larger mass culture.

Deep Surfaces: Mass Culture & History in Postmodern American Fiction

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Univ of Georgia Pr

Learning to Fall: Recording the Blessings of an Imperfect Life

Religion & Spirituality

New Age & Spirituality

Peter Pauper Pr

Rattlesnake Ridge

It was 1989. Real estate mania was sweeping through the untamed woods of rural New Hampshire. Forrest Garnett, the largest landowner in the picture perfect town of Shaftsbury wanted no part of it. But he was pressed from all sides by men – including his own son – who saw dollar signs in every blade of grass. 
Now, one man had been murdered, and the air quivered with intrigue. Garnett wrote his daughter, Lily: "Beware, beware: there is blood in the water and the sharks are circling…" 
But despite that dire warning, this Phil Simmons novel is not just about murder, and it is blissfully lacking in violence and gore. 
It is, in fact, more a love story than a murder mystery, more a tale of land development and local pride than pure greed. It is a story that rings as true today as in 1989. And to the delight of readers, it’s sprinkled with comic patches and lyrical descriptions of the rugged mountains and tangled forests of central New Hampshire. Phil Simmons just couldn’t put aside his irrepressible sense of humor and his love of the land. 
It is a first novel, and there will be no second. Phil Simmons died July 27, 2002, of Lou Gehrig’s disease. 
That’s where David Reich came in. He polished the text with great skill and good humor. Reich, a former editor at the World, the national magazine of the Unitarian Universalist religious denomination, had been editing Simmons’s work since the middle 1990s. In fact, many of the essays from Learning to Fall were published in the World first, and when it came time to put the collection together, Reich edited that, too.

Wasteland Pr

Contemporary

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