Fleeting Faces

A couple days ago, I ran by a figure sitting on her stoop and was momentarily terrified. I could not figure out how her head was positioned, and so what I took for her face appeared deformed, like that of a monster. I stared and stared trying to locate her features until I ran right past her and the monster became human. Just an old woman with her head twisted sideways away from me, leaning on one hand. Phew.

A couple days ago, I attended a lecture at the Kimmel Center featuring Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs-- minimalist artists of the post-modern age. Lucinda held herself gracefully, was slender as a paper doll it seemed. Her veins stood out prominently, snaking down her long, thin, wrinkled arms and ended in large, beautiful hands with long, thin fingers that gestured elegantly in the air as she spoke. Her permanently knit eyebrows gave her face a hawkish look that was softened, however, by her gentle smile. Whenever she looked toward her right, in Philip's direction, half of her hawkish face was cast in shadow, the other half lit by stage light. I took a mental picture. In hearing a reference to her "silent pieces", she amended the term, saying they weren't quite silent as you could hear the pitter-patter of the dancer's feet on the stage. I loved that.

First Sound

I woke up to the sound of rain falling. It was the first thing I was conscious of...way before opening my eyes. It fell heavily, steadily. It was so beautiful...Love mornings.

Snowballing

Sometimes, when I read the news, I get the feeling that the stability of our race is hanging by a very fine thread. It's rather like an elephant balancing on a pebble. Or a marshmallow peep stuck in the microwave with the seconds counting down. I believe religious tolerance is key to maintaining this precarious balance, but it's the smallest incident that could snowball into something horrifically damaging on a global scale.

Who (besides da Vinci and Nostradamus) could have foreseen that the actions of a tiny church in Florida would lead to actual deaths in faraway Afghanistan? That is a very scary demonstration of cause-and-effect. Incidents like the planned Qur'an burning and that infamous Danish cartoon a few years back are just small ripples in a sea that is quietly seething underneath.

So which is it gonna be, religious strife or nuclear warfare, that finally puts an end to us? Stay tuned!

Tolstoyan Euphemism

Tolstoy's preferred euphemism for "to make battle/war" is "to chop and hack at each other" (Constance Garnett translation). He's a man of 4-lettered words.

And yes (as my fellow early-riser roommate pointed out), I am spending the good morning eating challah and reading War & Peace. Shana Tovah to all, and to all a good morning.

This Good Morning

Good morning! Good morning! It's the turn of the season and of a new day, and the possibilities seem endless. Who knows what this day will bring? What people I will encounter? Could be good, could be bad, could be LIFE CHANGING. Could be the love of my life. Could be ballet...Could be a greasy, cheesy, fatty burger. Could be a new feeling or a brand new idea. An alien might sweep me away, or I will sweep IT away into the vast possibilities of my new day. Already the birds are chirping! There go the possibilities of birds not chirping into my morning. An airplane drones in the distance. It has marked the sky and my morning. A rattle of tools, voices carrying indistinguishable words, a truck starts, the birds continue to chirp, my purple curtain ripples as the autumn breeze blows softly into my good morning. It is fresh! I must go and mark my morning.

Infinite Yet Bounded

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep
The more I give to thee, the more I have
For both are infinite.

I have a theory about love. People say that love is infinite, but I don't think this is quite true. I think it is infinite so long as all your love is given to one person. But once you start loving more than one person, you begin to realize the finite qualities of love. I think you can love each person infinitely, but the overall amount of love that you can give in total is quite finite. This theory may be nearly as confusing as the fact that the universe is infinitely huge, yet bounded.

It is 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm babbling incoherently about something that can never be pinned down, about an ever-elusive butterfly.

Rhythm of Life

I just realized that for the past 2.5 months, I've spent 6 hours a day, 3-5 days a week in a narrow 2.5-foot-wide space with whichever co-worker I happened to be scheduled with for that shift. That's a lot of hours in such a narrow space, and yet, I don't ever feel confined.

To be sharing that tiny space with another person is an interesting and new experience. It becomes essential to say "behind you" every time you pass behind your co-worker, no matter how repetitive it may seem (and I did feel like a broken record at first, but got used to it eventually).

It also becomes essential to know when to step in and help out in making drinks rather than manning the register (the business side of the job). I didn't get the hang of this until I began taking over the drink-making here and there and realized how many orders a barista can take before he or she becomes overwhelmed. Now I sort of get it, though it's not quite perfect yet.

When I do get the hang of it though, it feels rather nice because I hit a sort of rhythm with my co-worker and it becomes a partnership, or if you prefer more poetic imagery-- a dance. Working in this narrow space behind the bar has made me realize that there are rhythms to situations in life that don't explicitly involve dancing or music.

This evening, just a few minutes before closing, I looked out the window and saw dozens of naked men and women riding by on bicycles.

"Oh my god, it's the Naked Bike Ride!" I cried. Customers turned from their coffee to the windows, and my co-workers and I rushed over to the edge of the counter nearest the window and gaped at the mass of pale buttcheeks sitting atop bike seats, riding by with cheers and whoops. We gaped and gaped and I felt strangely uncomfortably at seeing strange men's dicks hanging out in the open.

The Penniless Picasso gave me another drawing today-- the 4th one so far. I love our Penniless Picasso. I still haven't told you what he said to me the other day, have I? Story for another post. Suffice to say that tonight, due to no particular reason, or perhaps due to several reasons at once, I am full of seemingly imperturbable happiness and love. As well, a piece of rabbit sits in my stomach (a consequence of dinner). I'm feeling jumpy.

Modern Jazz

Symmetry is closed on holiday for the rest of the week, and so I decided on a whim (and an invite) to take a jazz class at Koresh. I had no dance clothes-- not even a hair tie-- so I danced in denim capris and borrowed a hair tie from the girl at the front desk.

The class was lovely. I was surprised by a few things:

1) By how balletic the moves were. We used balletic arms (port-de-bras) and degages in warm-up, changements across the floor, and coupes and pas-de-bourres in the dance combination. Most pronouncedly, the teacher himself moved and carried himself with balletic grace, even when he was teaching a "jazzy" move.

2) By the lyrical quality of the dance. I was expecting jazz walks and such, but there was nothing of a sort. Throughout the class, we were continually falling into gravity, using natural momentum, never fighting against what felt natural. I think I am by nature a jumper and so I tend to spring up rather than fall into the ground by default. I had to work to fall into the arabesque instead of bouncing out of it.

3) By how much fun I had. In continually falling into gravity and using my natural momentum while dancing, I felt so utterly free. I walked home feeling like I'd been playing on a swing for an hour-and-half. I adore swings.

4) By how much of my nearly-yearlong training at Symmetry came into use in this jazz class. As I balanced on releve/high-pose, changement'ed across the floor, and simply every time I moved, I felt all my learning from the past year coming into play. What a worthwhile year it's been!

5) By how much I loved dancing in bare feet.