additional space

 

Dear Y'all,

Yes, I am thinking of you!  I still have to tell you about two books I read, but you know how it is, things keep coming, clocks keep ticking.  I am reading another book now; and there is a part about space and time; and that made me think on space.  Well, let me be more precise.  In my reading, I tripped on a thought from my own mind; it happened when I was re-reading a sentence, trying to 'know' it, to feel it, to internalize it.  Of course I wasn't even sure what the sentence meant.  And there was a song on the radio, a song that sort of drones/expands/continues, like many songs I am fond of and insert a little pause in my mind's endless rattling.  So this little stumble, and wondering if a person I know would like this book, caused me to consider a thing a woman I know used to say when she was leading our monthly group centered on anti-racism.  She felt, and I am not here to dispute it, that our systemic, learned, invisible-to-us, racism needed to be addressed somatically; or to put it the other way, anti-racism needed to be embodied individually.  To facilitate this embodiment, we would begin with various meditative practices.  

All this preamble, all this context, just to tell you that what she said often during our meditative preparation was: open your consciousness a little wider, make a little more space for even this; this new grief, this new atrocity, this new information.  She said there was ample space for these feelings to fit in our crowded brains.

Now I have heard a lot of these kinds of instructions, and you have, too: imagine the liquid gold flowing and filling yourself as a vessel, breathe in the positive and exhale the negative, let thoughts float on by as if clouds.  Not much of it has been worth remembering and certainly not worth repeating, but this one, an invocation to make more room for things, make space for difficult thoughts and feelings, this seemed very useful to me.  I often feel very small when I am overloaded, over extended, and grasping, and like I need to cram things, or get rid of things, or bar any further things from entering and this phrase suggested that I just needed to notice that there was plenty of space for everything.  Rooms and rooms, acres and miles of space.

PS  Have another version; let me know which you prefer; write to me and leave your note in the usual place; the oak bole by the dry riverbed.

What next?

Dear Wondering about The Future,

Me too.  There is so much to think about right now.  I know you are thinking it too;  what will we want, what will we need, what will we do when we can do what we did before? 

I have been keeping track of what I miss, and, it isn't as much as you might think.  I miss the idea of getting to go places, but maybe not the actual going, if you see what I mean?  I miss the libraries.  I miss my job because sometimes it felt like it was 'important work,' but I am not such a fool that I didn't know that feeling was a bit of a vanity.  Mostly, I was around some mighty nice people, and now I am not.  I miss the ice cream and the coffee shop, but not as much as I would miss the empty lot if it were developed and turned into an ice cream or coffee shop.  I miss sharing close space with some people, but not all people.

This article crystallizes and echoes some of my vaporous thoughts about what I miss and what I don't miss.  I hope you will take the time to read it, and begin to imagine what you will want when you can do what you did before.

Come; See Brigadoon.

Dear Space-Conscious,

Today I want to direct you to a wonderful ceramic artist:  Toshiko Takaezu.  To put us in the right frame of mind to appreciate her beautiful vessels, imagine first, the poetic and wonderful paradox of a container that cannot be empty nor can it be filled.

At the Crocker Museum, in Sacramento, I saw some of these lovely pieces, and they were so very right.  They were like the Sisters of Mercy.  These containers answered all of my questions:  I hope you run into them soon.  Learn what messages these containers have for you, at your own languid pace, in this beautiful book..

They were overflowing with feeling and presence.  Here is another song that seems an apt metaphor for the contents of the containers:  The Whole of the Moon. 

Now, let's listen to what Ms. Takaezu has to say about her work.

An Interview with Toshiko Takaezu from D.B.Long on Vimeo.






How about a little reprise?  And another?