When I visited rural Japan in late fall, many windows in ordinary houses were filled with drying persimmon (fuyu). They’d become wrinkled, brownish-rust ovals the size of oranges. The large stem had been pared off and the fruits were hung with the former stem on the side, so their shapes became a flattened egg-shape. Outside […]
MOTION SPEAKS | Toes – Fuyu Read More »
Fling your arm wide, up and around. The shoulder is the only human joint that rotates 180 degrees. I asked Joan, a dancer, to do this after I’d tied a string, wetted with paint, under her shoulder. After she’d completed her task, the wet paint made complex swirls. I found the design intriguing, resembling, to
MOTION SPEAKS | Shoulder Read More »
I stripped off my shirt and dipped a string in black paint. Jane, an artist and friend stood ready with my camera. When I held the string out to her, she took it and carefully tied it around the center of my back. Slowly, I raised my right shoulder as high as possible. Hearing Jane
MOTION SPEAKS | Wings of Paint Read More »
Last spring, when COVID started, I decided to paint a self-portrait. This seemed like a worthy endeavor during a pandemic: to leave my countenance behind should I succumb to the virus. I enjoy combining oil paint with an 8B pencil. First, I stain heavy paper with abstract oil wash designs, the paint thinned with turpentine.
Portraits In This World And The Next Read More »
Every ten days or so, I spoke to my spiritual counselor and she often advised me to deepen my gratitude. In our land of plenty and at a time of personal financial comfort, I tried feeling sincerely grateful for food and shelter, things I normally took for granted. Slowly, in my everyday life, an appreciative
Full Exposure to Gratitude Read More »
The pandemic has held us captive for almost a year. We’ve needed to make long-term and on-going adjustments to protect ourselves. As we approach our first anniversary with COVID19, we’ve seen the people who couldn’t cope: the ones in denial who said it wasn’t real, the ones who rebelled and met together in large unmasked groups,
Vibrant Inner Structure Can Sustain Us Read More »
In October, our thoughts turn to those spirits who may still roam among us. Other cultures didn’t try to keep these phantasms away, but encouraged them to stay with us, believing them to be ancestors who could help us from the beyond. The Standing Gong from North Ambrym Island in Vanuatu, a South Pacific nation,
Keeping Ancestors Alive Read More »
Until the pandemic mandate to avoid touching our faces, I thought I rarely laid a finger on that piece of anatomy other than to apply my daily vitamin E cream. In accord with a universal truism, the minute something became forbidden, I had to do it. My head seemed to erupt in hundreds of itches
Living through a pandemic is like enduring a long, contested divorce. One false move and the enemy can seize us. In my sister’s divorce, still on-going after three years, if she gets angry at her cheating spouse, the lawyer accuses her of being an emotionally unstable mother. She has to remain serene as a saint.
Pandemic Is Like Divorce Read More »
Aside from the threat of imminent, hideous death by asphyxiation, I have never felt so supremely happy as during the pandemic. As an introvert, I’d always suffered as an invisible minority, a person who craved quiet in a noisy world. Cities assumed everyone wanted a stadium or a convention center. With successful bond-raising efforts and,
