I returned late last night from the annual Dance New England summer camp near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire, and woke this morning with dancing tape still on a couple of toes, the echo of taut and trained muscle still in the sinews, and the ache of separation from that vibrant and affectionate community of dancers already wringing out …
From "cannot imagine" to "will not accept"; from "will not surrender" to "can never forget". The layers and levels we uncover in meeting this life challenge our small comforts. If we meet the surface, and draw it aside like a curtain that veils our senses, we reveal richer colors to our sight, intensify the sensation …
Nineteen eighty-four. What was at one time a distant dream, the darkness of a book, an election year, a future, became the present. We didn't have to do anything; we didn't lift a finger, but gradually the date overtook us and passed us by, leaving us stationary at the roadside, the dusty wind of its …
What we repeat becomes our center, that's sure. So when the wind is kicking up spray — when the movement of the air is really howling round you — we return to what we have repeated, what has become our rote. If it is made of wood, you will likely float; if it is a …
Was the phrase "to harp on" really coined by Shakespeare — Still harping on, my daughter? — or did he conveniently lift it from earlier works, freshen it up, add a dash of dash, and re-release it to a marveling public? Perhaps every artist should work this way. A rather recent invention of the overweaned ego, the …
In our naturally egocentric way, we consider our senses channels of information that bring the world to us. We scan the horizon to identify threat or opportunity, we read; we listen to what is hidden or to what is spoken, what is sung; we are drawn to scents and repelled from odors, and we delight …
The mind's eye is easily occluded, as simply and as naturally as clouds form and veil the face of the Sun. Or the eye's perception may be overwhelmed by the colors and the kaleidoscopic movement of the world. If that eye is clouded, we experience the surfaces of things; beautiful, plentiful, absorbing. But in all …
I appreciate all the more how cultivating the habit of choosing Light instead of confusion changes not only my inner world, but paints the external as well. Early morning yoga feels to me as though I myself, infinitesimal against the backdrop of planets and galaxies, and infinite tracts of empty space, am the agent of …
When the eyes are open, all of Creation is reduced to surfaces… imagine the poverty in a world of surfaces. As though all that an ocean offered us was its waves! As soon as the eyes open, the interiors begin to close, the interiors of everything that sight obscures from us, the interior of our …
The skill of the morning is to wake as if called by a soft bell, or the stroke of a lover, or the flavor of a fresh fruit, or the possibility of peace.
The archer strengthens the bow arm, grips the leather, nocks an arrow, and bends the sinew to the corner of the mouth. Breath enters as the bow is drawn, breath is stilled as the arrow is poised for flight, and all is released together. Release. And the arrow, willed to its destination strikes home. Meditation …
A song was running through my head all day today, a thread of sound sewn from the inside out, arriving at the inner ear audibly enough that I began to sing along… and so the music, which had already been part of the world, returned to it. What we take into us, changes us. What …