Grasping

I went so far inside my head today, it's taking some effort to center again. I want to know how other people are holding on to themselves in the face of such daily chaos and noise. 

"A fog that won't burn away drifts and flows across my field of vision. I can't distinguish the fog from the overcast sky; I can't be sure if the light is direct or reflected. When you see fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, it's not the fog itself you see, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in shreds. So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity." 

Annie Dillard, The Abundance  

Finding

Strong desire to attribute meaning to visual information, especially with the emergence of pattern

Appears to read like text

Consider alternatives

Play as musical score

Construct it out of beads

Stitch the forms in raised scars

Aggregation

Felt like the smallest parts comprised the most powerful gesture today. A little home improvement. 

Edge

This happened on my way to work today. 

"It is when one is in extreme thirst, 

ill with thirst; then one no longer thinks of the act

of drinking in relation to oneself, or even the act of drinking

in a general way. One merely thinks of water, 

actual water itself, but the image of water is like a cry

from our whole being." 

Simone Weil

Float

Work in progress. 

Waxing

I keep calendars that show tides and the cycles of the moon. I love looking at the correlations between the two, and the beautiful sine curve arcing through the days and across the month. Patterns emerging from natural forms help me ground myself in times of chaos. Recognizing these forms and systems at work reminds me that there is great beauty to be found in looking, and that the potential for growth is always within reach. This image adds a human component: a high school botany class greenhouse, hands fostering growth, care taken in placement, and trust in our world working. 

Sedum starts, Garfield High School, 2017

Dance

I am a dancer. I'm practicing embracing this, not explaining it away or subjugating it because I'm essentially untrained. My truest moments have been borne through dance, from the cut-completely-loose stag leaps in the woods when I was a kid to the internally-directed discipline I've discovered through barre and always, always on the dance floor. I dance for myself, which is reason enough.

My state of perpetual beginning with dance has me enchanted with its most basic elements. I'm intrigued by the variety of ways that I can inhabit space. I love how profoundly both large movement and tiny gesture can communicate. And I'm drawn to the spectacle: extraordinarily personal choices enacted in a public setting thrill me.

In light of this, I'm inviting anyone who is interested in participating in this spectacle to contact me via my website. I'll be organizing a group and both a date and a location for the work and sharing information about next steps for bringing it to fruition later this month.

Space

One of the things I've come to know on a deep level is the importance of making space for things to unfold, for the goodness of life to happen without imposing constraints, or the illusion that I can write the script for how things should go. This is a knowing that is served up over and over again -- those moments where you've added too much to your plate and you feel overwhelmed are good indicators that you've gone a little off course, just as the moments that flower in front of you are fundamental reminders of what grows when you step back.

Sentiment

My feelings: conflicted

Your stepping into the future is a strange sentiment butexactly what it should be

You independent is not me defining what it will be

Tenderness of childhood

Curiosity

Playfulness with words, thoughts

Golden touch with friends, perhaps you've inherited this

Be brave, try things, use heart head and hands

Measure twice

All said with caveat that words mean a lot but actions mean more

Fire

Reflecting on fire last night during and after Holcombe Waller's performance with Lone Pine Studio that conjured up the fire caused by the Mosier train derailment, at the close of a summer of catastrophic fires, and while stacking wood for my own stove. There's no hiding fire, but even in its blatancy it contains a broad capacity for nuances between good and horrible. Is there a universal threshold up to which humans feel they are in control of fire? What are the parameters we use to determine our level of comfort? Obvious measurements can include size, site or surroundings, what is fueling the fire, and ritual or meaning, whether personal or cultural. Returning to Gaston Bachelard's Psychoanalysis of Fire may offer a guide to some of these questions.

Fire Ring, Swan Lake, MT 2017