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Compulsive, pink

I asked a friend why he was giving what seemed to me like way more than enough time and energy to a project, and he said, in the clipped manner that sometimes made me laugh, “Compulsive.” Both of us laughed in mutual acknowledgment of his “condition”.

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Kathleen Williamson’s “Casa Shtetl”

An arrow into my heart–Kathleen Williamson’s wild wit and wisdom. Yay! for the beauty of a radical thinker who is an artist and who dares to be a deeply aware human being.

Williamson is a poet, a songwriter, a singer, a Ph.D. anthropologist, and a lawyer–and all of those callings blend with ease in her performance titled Casa Shtetl, which she debuted, in what she’d call an experimental form, the other night. Read more

Today’s calling

Here’s what’s important today:

Gunpowder green tea, brewed very strong, drunk plain

Pigeon pose, both upright and in a forward fold, in yoga class

Meditation

The taste and nourishment of dried apricots, Greek yogurt (the Fage brand, with its very thick creaminess, that I buy at Trader Joes’), tamari-roasted almonds, an avocado, olive oil, and lettuce

Letting a prose poem, composed of shorter prose poems, take shape in its own fashion, with no push from me, so that whatever results, whether written today or in a week, startles this author with its beauty

A phone conversation with my friend Shelley in Urbana, Illinois

Going to my friend Kat’s performance, a house concert

Picking up Kat’s nearly 100-year-old neighbor, to take her to the performance, along with my friend Frances

Nothing pressing. Life calling, and I wouldn’t name any of that life today a job or a lesson or a gesture of good will. Rather, I feel called to be with everyday intimacies that feel at once necessary and desired.

  • February 21, 2010
  • Filed under: Love
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Confiding in myself

Com, with, plus fidere, to trust, are the basis for the Latin confidere, which means to confide. Confidence derives from confidere, and one of the roots of faith is the Latin fidere. These ancient linguistic connections among faith, trust, confiding, and confidence bring to that last word a depth that we miss when we think of confidence only as self-assurance. Who asks, Am I willing to confide in myself? Am I my most trusted friend? Can I be my confidante rather than my confessor who every day belabors a multiplicity of mea culpas? Do I live with faith?

  • February 17, 2010
  • Filed under: Love
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Hair color 1

In a class of mine called Beauty and the Body we were talking about age and beauty, and responding to my question, “What associations come to mind regarding gray hair?” a young woman said, “Monotone.” Others seemed to silently agree. Light hair and light skin they were thinking.

Well, what about very dark black skin and black hair? What about blonde hair and Anglo skin?–in other words, another variation of light hair and light skin. Interesting, too, that we call light skin fair skin if it’s young–and fair is a synonym for pretty.

“Pale” came up and perhaps “drab” too when more students added the images in their minds. As they spoke, monotone was meaning achromatic, which translates as loss–loss of color. With a nod to Lao Tzu, those who see loss will become loss.

  • February 11, 2010
  • Filed under: Beauty
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Mistaken identities

I witnessed a fascinating case of mistaken identity. I was the one in error, and for current purposes I’m defining mistaken identity like this: when a person thinks something about someone, often a stranger or a new individual in her life, and finds out, either pronto or down the line that she is WRONG.

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Coherent

I imagine that most of us have experienced the “need” to explain ourselves to someone we love, whether that person is kin, spouse, lover, or friend. We think that we must be clear or that the other person requires that. Often, such a need happens during or after a fight, and the source of the need is defensiveness. We have something to prove or we have to be right. Often, the other person is demanding that we explain ourselves, a demand that may be verbal or that may be aggressively implicit.

I don’t remember what my lover and I were talking about when he said, “You don’t have to be coherent,” but we certainly weren’t fighting. I do remember that the subject was deeply personal and that I was wanting to be clear about something I was feeling.

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A clearing of congestion

The Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan asserts that congestion causes all illness. Accordingly, illness can be mental or physical congestion, congestions of which a person is aware, such as post-nasal drip, or ones to which she is numb or of which she is ignorant, such as a tightness that has lived in her body for so long that it feels natural or a hatred of someone that feels so right that the hater does not call her heart into question.

Congestion is a lack of space. Space and clarity go hand in hand.

Clarity is a clearing of congestion.

Not driven

Early today over tea I discovered this: I’m not driven anymore.

Professionally I’ve lived in the art world and academia, which harbor highly driven people. Ambition is fine with me. But there’s ambition with generosity and there’s ambition that’s everything-for-me. The latter clangs and screams in the professional worlds with which I’m most familiar: individual status, making a name for oneself, telling others how great you are by touting your publications or exhibitions or speaking engagements, asking your “colleagues” what they’re doing so that you can compare your accomplishments with theirs and come out feeling superior, though you may well end up feeling inferior.

Ambition with generosity produces a desire to help others. Because of whatever success or status has come my way, how might I make the path easier for a younger colleague? What have I learned through and about my intellectual and bodily disciplines and practices that I can give? How do I share what I know and what I continue to learn? Read more

Quandary, clarity

Saturday morning another intense vinyasa workout (see January 14, 2010, Morning/yoga/dance) overjoyed me. Michelle guided us in constant movement from a high lunge at the top of our mats to one at the back, over and over. Then, as on Wednesday, we sank into Goddess Squat, this time with our arms striking straight up and then forward, parallel to the ground. In each of the many repetitions we opened our fists in the outward gesture and closed them as we pulled our hands, fingers up, into the torso. Vocalization increased the exertion and the pleasure: Ha! with every inward action of the arms.

The last week of 2009 into the second week of 2010 found me in an uncharacteristically indecisive place about an aspect of my life. Quandary then clarity then quandary then clarity . . . By the Wednesday evening after the first super-activating vinyasa class clarity was mine!

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