I recently wrote about the Skin Horse from the Velveteen Rabbit, and the idea of the body aging, becoming real and the heart opening to become a part of everything.
What remains of this web is becoming a part of the sky, dissolving into the vastness beyond the careful weaving of the absent spider. The web also reminds me of what happens when we push against something – the price of resistance.
Pam White has a series of horse paintings she calls “Spirit Horses.” To me they capture the dharma of the improvisation life. Each stroke, each shape feels like it came directly from the painter’s body, from listening to what the horses demand.
Initially this might seem like a strange contradiction. What does the seeming chaos of improvisation have to do with dharma’s “divinely instituted natural order of things.” (Wikipedia)
When I am improvising, whether it is in the kitchen making lasagna or in the field with the Mustang Nelson, or in the dance studio following my body’s voice, I am attuning to an order that comes from the heart, the body and the moment. The improvisation life is one where we are fluid, flexible, adaptable. I cannot live an improvisational life if I start the day with the lists – the dust of mundane details that can settle over every creative impulse in a moment. Begin on the yoga mat, the meditation cushion, in the field with a dog, a horse, a lover. Let yourself be moved.
I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything – other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion – that standing within this otherness – the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst-stung heart. (Mary Oliver)
This morning as I sipped my coffee, a bank of fog came tumbling over the crest of Indian Mountain. A light wind tattered the edge, and then the fog thickened again. It was as if the clouds and the wind were playing, conversing. Below, the swamp maples are dressed for fall.
Today I am interested in the edges of things. The edge of my cup as the sun carves an arc of light onto its surface. The warm edges of my body meeting the coolness of the air. The way we experience one moment (sipping coffee) falling, edging into the next (taking out the trash). The way summer is falling.
Just now, as you are sitting, what edges are you aware of? Can you let that feeling become clearer? And then can you soften that edge, so that your body and whatever you are touching dissolve into each other – like the fog and the wind in the picture?
