Category Archives: improvisation life

Oct24

skip

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Skipping

by Robert Morgan

A carburetor skips, and rocks
will skip along the surface of
a pond. A fugitive will skip
the country if he can, and crooks
will skip the payment of their debts.
And one can walk content or run
with joy across a summer field.
But why omitting steps is such
a sign of pleasure’s hard to say,
as if the gap and shift, the quick
eliding interruption of
a stride, reflects the shiver jolt,
releasing dance; accentuates,
as heart is said to skip a beat,
the lift, arrhythmic, breathless gasp
and rush and reach of crossing first
one threshold then another in
the vivid hop from foot to foot,
the hurrying toward and with delight.

“Skipping” by Robert Morgan, from Terroir. © Penguin, 2011. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

This is from The Writer’s Almanac.  Sent to me by my friend Suzanne.

Can you find a skip today?

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Oct21

shelter

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I heard this version of Gimme Shelter by Playing for Change on the radio the other day and it has me thinking about shelter.

In writing my book, Horse Dancing, many of the artists I interview speak of the horse as shelter – a place of refuge and comfort.

Up here in the Adirondacks, away from home, I am aware that shelter is all my absent four-footed companions, and the familiar colors and shapes of my home. I shelter differently in each of my roles:  mother, artist, writer, rider, wife.

Shelter is improvisational too – we shape it as we travel, as we move from place to place, continually constructing little yurts, hollows, quiet corners in which to shelter.

Buddhists take refuge in the Buddha, the  dharma (the teachings), and the sanga (the community of practitioners.)

Where do you take shelter?  What is shelter for you?

Oct19

away

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Pam and I are in the Adirondacks for a few days of quiet. Maybe too quiet.  I miss the ruckus of our 8 cats and 4 dogs.   Precious, Obadiah, Nikita, Musia, Bella, Magdalena, Tallulah, Pachi, Jules, Guinevere, Cho, Liam.  I am not a minimalist in this regard.

On the other hand, this morning’s canoe and then long hike to the dam along the river was delicious.  Something we do not do at home.  Again, those cats and dogs.  Diving into the silence, the stillness is hard and good.

Pam read this post by Jon Katz to me this morning.  I am going to print it and read it every day.  Thank you Jon.  Thank you Pam.

 

 

Oct8

off island

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When we first adopted our daughters we lived on Martha’s Island.  It was a wonderful, safe, sea-bound nest. One thing the girls quickly learned was that whenever we went somewhere that required traveling on a ferry or a plane, we were heading “off island.”

Even after we moved back to the mainland, they would still talk about going off island.  It was a funny, quirky remnant of island time.

One thing we found when we moved to the mainland is that there were many, many roads. Not just North Road, South Road and Middle Road.  (There are others, but you do travel the same paths a lot.)   I spent the first couple years, meandering.  Particularly after my Mom died, I would leave the stable and just drive – the Hudson River region is endlessly beautiful – I got deeply lost and I loved it.  It was a way of working out my geography – the new landscape of where we physically lived and where I was in the world without my parents.

For me, off island has come to mean other things.  I feel that my work is taking me off island. That I am headed out to open water, sometimes without any sense of purposeful navigation.  Perilous, adrift.  Mostly though, going off island feel pretty exhilarating.

My writing, which has been focused for the past few years on writing a book, is starting to morph and  shift, and I find I am bringing more of myself “on the mainland.”  Meaning I am writing in a public forum, and am hungry for a different kinds of connection.  When I started planning the blog, my friend, Jon Katz, said “Do it.”  And I am doing it.  Every day.

What is taking you off island?