together

People choose to share grief willingly,

to bear witness to heartbreak

and love.

People do carry one another's burdens.

"life dancing itself"

Every now and then, I check out the website of a program called Speaking of Faith, a weekly show on NPR that discusses "religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas."  It's so rich and interesting that I can never really carry all the treasures it offers, but I always leave with my arms full of new thoughts, understanding, and the kinds of questions that enrich me even in the wondering.  Immediately below is a little excerpt from one of the articles I read in their series on "Play, Spirit, + Character." It's about random, expressive movement.  I couldn't help but write a little about it.  (Trying to summarize, at the very least, or put into my own words what people have already written better in theirs. :))  It's followed by a video and an excerpt from Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. 

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Expressive movement “…is required to be immediately superfluous. It…is life's need…to be nourished by randomness, to experiment again with a different and possibly more perfect union.”

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I often wonder at seemingly mundane things, one of which is the way our hearts and spirits connect to our bodies.  Some movements we create intentionally, like reaching for a glass of water.  But other movements seem to pour or flow or burst or cry out of us, unmediated by our minds at all.  These movements expose the bare and unedited reality within us, and simultaneously, when we witness or enact them, stitch up the wounds of falsity we inflict upon ourselves daily.  

Play, imagination, reaction, responding to what we know not yet, acting instinctively upon what's near and now, fluidly building that bridge between what's now and next.  That's the beauty of free movement, free and joyful expression.  Who can ever get enough of it?

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The air show announcer hushed.  He had been squawking all day, and now he quit.  The crowd stilled.  Even the children watched dumbstruck as the slow, black biplane buzzed its way around the air.  Rahm [the pilot] made beauty with his whole body; it was pure pattern, and you could watch it happen.  The plane moved every way a line can move, and it controlled three dimensions, so the line carved massive and subtle slits in the air like sculptures. ...The other pilots could do these stunts, too, skillfully, one at a time.  But Rahm used the plane inexhaustibly, like a brush marking thin air.  

His was pure energy and naked spirit.  ...Like music, it split the bulging rim of the future along its seam.  It pried out the present.  We watchers waited for the split-second curve of beauty in the present to reveal itself.  The human pilot, Dave Rahm, worked in the cockpit right at the plane's nose; his very body tore into the future for us and reeled it down upon us like a curling peel.

Like any fine artist, he controlled the tension of the audience's longing.  You desired, unwittingly, a certain kind of roll or climb, or a return to a certain portion of the air, and he fulfilled your hope slantingly, like a poet, or evaded it until you thought you would burst, and then fulfilled it surprisingly, so you gasped and cried out.

The oddest, most exhilarating and exhausting thing was this:  he never quit.  The music had no periods, no rests or endings; the poetry's beautiful sentence never ended; the line had no finish; the sculptured forms piled overhead, one into another without surcease.  Who could breathe, in a world where rhythm itself had no periods?

feet of courage

A great song with a beautiful video.

Nancy Elizabeth - Feet Of Courage from Leaf Label on Vimeo.

moon viewing

While in NYC a few weekends ago, I visited the Museum of Arts and Design, of which only a few levels were open.  One of the standard exhibits held a piece by Clifton Monteith, called "Moon Viewing Chair."

I was immediately transported upon reading the title.  It sounds so romantic and wondrous, to have a chair exclusively made for looking at the moon. A few Saturdays ago, I spent some time on our back deck wrapped in a blanket doing just that, and I can't help but think it would have been even more beautiful with a special chair built just for the purpose. 

Here's what the chair looks like (it would look so much prettier on a black background, but what can you do):  

The front is cool enough-- pretty bent reeds, looks a bit like a rocking chair-- but it's the back that really gets me!  In person especially, it looks like a boat!  It just makes me imagine gliding through the stars in the hull of a small, perfect boat, quietly dipping oars into the atmosphere, while breathlessly beholding the beauty of a story-high shimmering disc of silver. And I'm being serious.

I looked up more info about the piece and found that Moon Viewing is actually a Japanese ritual (passed to them by the Chinese) for admiring the beauty of the harvest moon. People gathered and had picnics and told children the story of "the moon fairy living in a crystal palace, who comes out to dance on the moon's shadowed surface."  Ancient legend that may be, but it's also the stuff of my most beloved childhood fantasies (just pair Swan Lake with any given cartoon about princess fairies and you're there).   

Anyway, I guess I'll have to stick with deck chairs for the time being, but don't you think I won't be hosting my own moon viewings when it's out there shining bright.  

surprise

I went to New York a few weekends ago to see my brother and his class's gallery show.  He's in grad school for illustration and had been working on this children's book since last year, so it was a big accomplishment for him, and so well done.  And he had a little surprise for me, too.

An emoticon of me smiling just doesn't do it justice.