silk mirth subtle

my apologies, dear reader, for an unexpectedly long hiatus . . . this musing has unfolded according to a rhythm all its own ... & i have had no choice but to oblige ...

do note, it is a posting in two parts . . .

& so it begins with a recent trip to a favorite style emporium to the avant-garde ... a confidante and i rendezvous there with regularity . . . treating ourselves to a touch of glamor . . . indulging, if modestly, in mixes & potions to infuse a hint of the mystical into our everyday

at the close of this particular explore, after kisses & wishes until next time, i headed off, the names of my purchases tumbling one over the other in my mind . . . mirth (a lip gloss) . . . subtle (loose powder) ... & ... at home, from a previous outing, silk (a powder blush) . . . subtle silk mirth . . . silk mirth subtle . . . i said it over and over - this tripling . . . distinct, clear, elegant . . . not sentence, phrase or clause . . . rather, an energy . . . sure, present, hovering . . . an ethereal delicacy . . . suspended . . . mid-air

'hold your body up' . . . sayaishii demands of us in our pre-dawn bikram practice. 'keep your torso light ... do not sink . . . you must suspend' ... i consider how much strength such lightness requires . . . i remember the cirque du soleil acrobat . . . jumping on his hands, yielding into the ground with each landing, only to push up into incredible lightness ...

the more you kick, the more you stretch, the more you stretch . . . the more likely you are to find suspension . . . for it is in that space between the kick and the stretch ... that suspension occurs . . . to relinquish the force in either direction in order to better grasp the suspension is to be left with nothing at all . . .

one recent morning, otis & i were leaving the park with the dogs when a whisper of balsam wafted up from the mulched path ... & was gone . . . vanishing as it appeared . . . leaving delight & wanting in its wake ...there was nothing to be captured from beneath our worn & muddied boots . . . i knew to keep walking, only then might it reappear . . .

when lulu was little, we would walk the drive of our adirondacks camp . . . looking under the canopy of ferns . . . for the fairies. . . a frond would sway . . . a breeze would give way to a rustling . . . the fairies were scurrying about . . . lulu and i would exclaim, 'ooh, i think i just saw a slipper disappear under that flower petal' . . . 'was that the flutter of wings?' . . .surely, the rational world would declare the absurdity here . . . that didn't matter to us . . . somewhere deep inside . . . in a zone of suspension ... still occurs a twitch of wonder . . . a little gasp of joy at even the remotest chance that little delicate fairies are going about their daily lives in and about their fern-covered houses .. & that lulu and i can pause long enough to allow for that possibility . . .

certain european medical cultures understand the body's circulatory system to contain isorings . . . zones of exchange . . . between artery and vein . . . where the blood is neither coming nor going . . . 'it is in the isoring that suspension occurs,' explains bonnie bainbridge cohen, founder of the school for body-mind centering(R). bonnie has spent a lifetime exploring the systems of the body, how and where they contain the potential for pause ...

awareness of these zones yields to calm . . . to a connection to space within one's being (physical, emotional, intellectual) where, bonnie tells us, 'you can find quietude & from there choose in which direction you will go'

. . . choose to not close off . . . not collapse . . . but rather, to suspend, observe, allow


. . . stones found on a recent winter beach ... one flat coal-grey, shimmering, another translucent plump, a third speckled celadon . . . on my desk, set on a washed aqua coaster, this tripling serves as foreground to the spare grace of a slip of dulled silver, a lost lighter waiting too in the sand that winter afternoon . . . les petits objets decoratifs . . .will they, when the moment of whimsy has yielded to the sure hand of practicality, be dismissed to the rubbish heap ... or ... will their space remain . . . touchstone to a precious winter afternoon spent at the beach . . . simply there . . . humble, innocent, evocative . . .

xxoo
cocoa