Friday, April 30, 2010
Rare Book Find
When I have money to burn, I will buy this. First edition of Jean Georges Noverre's "Letters on dancing and ballets" in its original French. For now, I will read the free pdf.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
No Word
No word from Symmetry for a disconcerting number of days. Life feels empty. It feels like someone died. This morbid feeling crept up on me for the first time as I was doing my plie warm-up this morning. Pathetic...I fell in love with a dance. Can't even cuddle with it.
It's that damned ship's reel! That ginormous antique reel that's embedded into the wall at the new studio, right where the barre is supposed to be! That's what's causing this hold-up. They've been trying to remove it for days!
And days...
and days...
It's that damned ship's reel! That ginormous antique reel that's embedded into the wall at the new studio, right where the barre is supposed to be! That's what's causing this hold-up. They've been trying to remove it for days!
And days...
and days...
Friday, April 23, 2010
Da Vinci & the Age of Reason
This is just too cool!
I've been taken by a certain season
in the life of mankind called the Age of Reason
When all that was sacred lay
not in catechisms and cathedrals
But in the world around us
And in the bodies we've been born into
Naked
Wrapped in circles and squares
Giving birth to the proportions of temples,
those very cathedrals, and of humbler homes
A microcosm
within a microcosm
within a micrososm
of what makes things tick with clockwork elegance
and ineffable beauty
Now made comprehensible by our liberation
from self-induced minority
A fall from grace implies not a fall from ideals
The pursuit of ideals still runs strong
But they be ideals of numbers, stone and living line
Rather than of Heaven or Hell
Not afterlife but Life:
the Affirmative,
the Here and the Now
I've been taken by a certain season
in the life of mankind called the Age of Reason
When all that was sacred lay
not in catechisms and cathedrals
But in the world around us
And in the bodies we've been born into
Naked
Wrapped in circles and squares
Giving birth to the proportions of temples,
those very cathedrals, and of humbler homes
A microcosm
within a microcosm
within a micrososm
of what makes things tick with clockwork elegance
and ineffable beauty
Now made comprehensible by our liberation
from self-induced minority
A fall from grace implies not a fall from ideals
The pursuit of ideals still runs strong
But they be ideals of numbers, stone and living line
Rather than of Heaven or Hell
Not afterlife but Life:
the Affirmative,
the Here and the Now
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Moving Day
Yesterday, Sarah and I took a break from studying at Capogiro's and wandered "nonchalantly" over to the old studio. (In truth, we were so terribly excited about the move and were looking for any opportunity to help out.) We wandered up the stairwell and heard shuffling and shifting sounds coming from the top. Symmetry was moving at last! We popped in, offered our services to the two girls-- Fang and Nancy-- who were working within, and ended up spending the rest of the day helping them to pack up the entire room into boxes and haul them over to the new space.
It was fascinating to find out just how much stuff was actually stored into that seemingly empty, minimalistically-decorated space. Our instructor was more of a pack-rat than I had imagined, though I got the impression that much of what lay in the room had been gifted to him. I couldn't see him going out and buying an ugly garden gnome, for instance. And yet, there it stood, small and hideous. Rummaging through all this stuff felt like exploring a great-great aunt's attic. Only instead of finding say 19th century antique dresses, we found dance photos and paintings, a bamboo lantern and white glass vase, incense, dusty bottles of perrier and other drinks, a red microwave I never noticed before, mugs and pots- mostly empty but one inexplicably filled with a white powder, and another with a tennis ball inside, an electric guitar, the ugly gnome, old flyers, bundles of used-up class cards, tools, and my personal favorite, a trove of cleaning supplies hidden in an alcove in the dressing room.
"Woah," I said to myself when I pulled aside the thin, pastel-floral fabric veiling the alcove and discovered the profusion of cleaning supplies behind it. He had a rather robust interest in cleanliness, I thought. I boxed up the smaller material, then ripped apart the pink curtains that covered the dressing room partition he'd built with his father (twice over because it had come out crooked the first time, and they couldn't find a crooked door to go with it). Through the newly-created openings, I passed the heftier equipment through to the other girls-- poles, mops, a jet pack vacuum, a regular vacuum, and so on. I learned that he had inherited a lot of the supplies from his father who'd been in the cleaning business. In the earlier spectrum of his life, he'd been a military photographer and had met his wife while on duty abroad.
As Fang told us a little more about his parents, I felt a twinge of regret at never having met them myself. Later though, as I walked into the foyer leading to the new dance studio, I found a small button-style picture of his parents hanging from the handle of one of the black-laquer Korean-style cabinets, along with two tiny, careworn teddy bears. I studied this picture and saw the familiar structure of our teacher's face in his father's, and the same smile. The ears though, he had inherited from his mother I think, for his father had ears of an imposing size.
At the new studio, after the last boxes had been hauled up the mountainous staircase, we set up only the equipment necessary to hold class: his desk, the barres, and the music. I crouched in the corner fiddling with the cords until at last, I pushed the power and play buttons and set the CD spinning. Violin voices resonated throughout the room, mingling with the new-building smell and the gold light emanating from small, rotatable spotlights suspended from the ceiling. Sarah and I consecrated the new space with a plie warm-up, facing each other like mirror images. Soon after, we turned off the music and the lights and headed home, full of anticipation for our first session in the new space.
It was fascinating to find out just how much stuff was actually stored into that seemingly empty, minimalistically-decorated space. Our instructor was more of a pack-rat than I had imagined, though I got the impression that much of what lay in the room had been gifted to him. I couldn't see him going out and buying an ugly garden gnome, for instance. And yet, there it stood, small and hideous. Rummaging through all this stuff felt like exploring a great-great aunt's attic. Only instead of finding say 19th century antique dresses, we found dance photos and paintings, a bamboo lantern and white glass vase, incense, dusty bottles of perrier and other drinks, a red microwave I never noticed before, mugs and pots- mostly empty but one inexplicably filled with a white powder, and another with a tennis ball inside, an electric guitar, the ugly gnome, old flyers, bundles of used-up class cards, tools, and my personal favorite, a trove of cleaning supplies hidden in an alcove in the dressing room.
"Woah," I said to myself when I pulled aside the thin, pastel-floral fabric veiling the alcove and discovered the profusion of cleaning supplies behind it. He had a rather robust interest in cleanliness, I thought. I boxed up the smaller material, then ripped apart the pink curtains that covered the dressing room partition he'd built with his father (twice over because it had come out crooked the first time, and they couldn't find a crooked door to go with it). Through the newly-created openings, I passed the heftier equipment through to the other girls-- poles, mops, a jet pack vacuum, a regular vacuum, and so on. I learned that he had inherited a lot of the supplies from his father who'd been in the cleaning business. In the earlier spectrum of his life, he'd been a military photographer and had met his wife while on duty abroad.
As Fang told us a little more about his parents, I felt a twinge of regret at never having met them myself. Later though, as I walked into the foyer leading to the new dance studio, I found a small button-style picture of his parents hanging from the handle of one of the black-laquer Korean-style cabinets, along with two tiny, careworn teddy bears. I studied this picture and saw the familiar structure of our teacher's face in his father's, and the same smile. The ears though, he had inherited from his mother I think, for his father had ears of an imposing size.
At the new studio, after the last boxes had been hauled up the mountainous staircase, we set up only the equipment necessary to hold class: his desk, the barres, and the music. I crouched in the corner fiddling with the cords until at last, I pushed the power and play buttons and set the CD spinning. Violin voices resonated throughout the room, mingling with the new-building smell and the gold light emanating from small, rotatable spotlights suspended from the ceiling. Sarah and I consecrated the new space with a plie warm-up, facing each other like mirror images. Soon after, we turned off the music and the lights and headed home, full of anticipation for our first session in the new space.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Playing With Dirt
Yesterday, I dug my hands in good old dirt for the first time since childhood as far as I can remember. When was the last time I potted a plant? Had I ever potted a plant before? I couldn't recall, but as I sat on my haunches like a kimchi lady outside the photo studio where I work, using my bare hands to scoop out old dirt and replace it with the new soil from a pot of ivies and some pink flowers, I felt incredibly happy. This is what humans were meant to do-- work outside, work with the earth, use our bodies-- not sit in offices all day.
"I know you didn't go to college to do this type of work..." my boss said apologetically.
Stop right there, Faith! This is exactly the sort of thing I love to do. I spent an hour or more sweeping out the shattered glass, dead leaves and dirt from her back lot. Together we lined up all the trash we found there: garbage cans full of the leaves, dirt, and glass; a random bucket of sticks and old frames holding antique-looking artwork; a giant piece of glass; and a giant window frame with shards of glass still lining the inside rim of it. We propped a piece of dirt-clogged cardboard within this frame, and stood back, admiring our work.
"It's like art," I said, giggling. "Very Avant-garde." I wanted to take a photo of it, but resisted going inside and retrieving my camera. Instead, I moved on to gardening. I learned more about gardening that day than I had in the past nearly-26 years. The damp dirt underneath the dry surface dirt felt soft-- not quite like flour, but just as nice-- and looked so like crushed oreos that I felt mildly tempted to scoop some right into my mouth. Successfully resisting this strange urge, I immediately thought of the book, "100 Years of Solitude", because there was a girl in that story who only ate dirt. Oh Magical Realism. Other random thoughts floated around in my head as I crouched in the warm sunshine playing with dirt.
"I know you didn't go to college to do this type of work..." my boss said apologetically.
Stop right there, Faith! This is exactly the sort of thing I love to do. I spent an hour or more sweeping out the shattered glass, dead leaves and dirt from her back lot. Together we lined up all the trash we found there: garbage cans full of the leaves, dirt, and glass; a random bucket of sticks and old frames holding antique-looking artwork; a giant piece of glass; and a giant window frame with shards of glass still lining the inside rim of it. We propped a piece of dirt-clogged cardboard within this frame, and stood back, admiring our work.
"It's like art," I said, giggling. "Very Avant-garde." I wanted to take a photo of it, but resisted going inside and retrieving my camera. Instead, I moved on to gardening. I learned more about gardening that day than I had in the past nearly-26 years. The damp dirt underneath the dry surface dirt felt soft-- not quite like flour, but just as nice-- and looked so like crushed oreos that I felt mildly tempted to scoop some right into my mouth. Successfully resisting this strange urge, I immediately thought of the book, "100 Years of Solitude", because there was a girl in that story who only ate dirt. Oh Magical Realism. Other random thoughts floated around in my head as I crouched in the warm sunshine playing with dirt.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Leading An Anti-Emersonian Life
It's been awhile since I've thought about God (or whatever "higher being"). I've become so immersed in worldly activities that He's become a non-entity for me. Is this a good thing, a bad thing or no thing? The most spiritual I've felt in the past few months has been when I'm doing plies at the barre. It's been awhile since I've immersed myself in geography that is overwhelming in both size and beauty, like endless mountains, oceans, forests, or canyons. Instead, I've been caught up in noticing the miniscule, human-scale elements of beauty. I need to go camping.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Killer Calves
I own a pair of denim capris that I've worn three
times so far since the sun came back. Each of those times, I've gotten
a comment about my killer calves, which apparently "bulge" out of the
pant legs when I'm standing on tippy-toes at the gelato house counter,
or dancing tango, or even just walking. My killer calves have become
the talk of the town! The third time, I was walking home in the dark
with Sarah, when a biker rode up behind us exclaiming, "What did you do
to get those killer calves?!" I turned around and stared because I
thought she said something about killing cops.
To answer the biker's question, it's in the jeans. I mean genes. My dad has killer calves, and they ended up on my legs. Aside from nature, these sons of guns have been nurtured: I've spent many hours for the past 5 months balancing on my toes. My killer calves will only get more killer (killest?) since I've begun training for the Broad Street Run. By the end of this month, my killer calves will probably get stopped at the airport security checkpoints because they'll be considered a weapon.
To answer the biker's question, it's in the jeans. I mean genes. My dad has killer calves, and they ended up on my legs. Aside from nature, these sons of guns have been nurtured: I've spent many hours for the past 5 months balancing on my toes. My killer calves will only get more killer (killest?) since I've begun training for the Broad Street Run. By the end of this month, my killer calves will probably get stopped at the airport security checkpoints because they'll be considered a weapon.
Eating Flowers
Homecooked Indian food is as much a treat for the nose as it is for the tongue. Cumin, cinnamon, cardomom, coriander and countless other spices suffuse your olfactory senses with each bite, like biting into a bouquet of ultra-exotic flowers (containing chunks of chicken).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)