Play, movement, beauty, and grace – this is why I love juggling. It uses a hard constraint (the predictable inevitability of gravity) as a resource to create beauty. Thanks to Thomas for the link, who is my own master at this aesthetic.
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I have noticed over the years that much public discourse is informed but what we see on television. Whether it is the cross-examination of the courtroom drama, or the witty one liners of sitcoms, or the over extended drama of soap operas, the way we talk to each other is heavily influenced by what is screened around us.
This clip is interesting: interviews with screenwriters who point out the function of dialogue in a television show. One of the high points of writing dialogue, it turns out, is that it will never be effective if people are actually seen talking to each other. So it’s no surprise that bringing these forms of conversation into the real world creates all sorts of dysfunctional social situations.
The only character you should be in real life is you.
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With no future there is no worry. If we are truly present in this moment, the story we hold about the future drops away and with it goes worry.
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My friend Thomas Arthur is ensconed on San Juan Island and has decided to charter a personal ritual of hope. From Solstice to Obama’s inauguration, he is making a short video a day and posting them when he can at his Vimeo page.
What are YOU doing to ring in the changes and see that they take root?
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This Christmas might be the first white Christmas for all of Canada since 1971. To celebrate, I’d like to point you to my friend Jeremy Hiebert’s stunning collection of photos of ice from Lake Okanagan. This is not a photo collection, it is a poem of the highest order. Sit still and watch the slideshow fill your eyes with the wonder of this earth.
And to accent it here is a poem from me, using the wonderful language of ice:
Crawl to the edge of the fast ice
where the ice front holds still
as the pancakes form up.
Not from the breakdown of nilas or ice rind
this pancake forms under the swell that tossess
slush ice, shuga and grease around in the bay.
This morning a lump of anchor ice rose
honeycombed and rotten and washed ashore
stranded on the beach.
Out in the open sea, ice sky glistens
with ice blink where the multiyear floes
nip each other, calve and tumble and raft.
crowding the polynya with brash
turning up bummocks
on the growlers and bergy bits
tonight I head inland across the rime
home to a warm room
and an old book on navigation and hazards
The leads will open in spring
and the water sky returns, dark and hopeful
icefeet slowly retreating to the beach.
Winter is here.