thursday, february 12

Hello out there, friends around the world, friends who have had so many different February 12, 2015s today, people who are holding hands across space.

In the spirit of [thefebruaryproject], I want to share something light-hearted today. I don’t mean that it’s not serious, because isn’t seeing and connecting with the world’s light-heartedness just as serious, important, and slowly transformative as being heavy-hearted is?

When I was asking myself what buoys my spirits to share with this community, Spike Jonze’s music video to Weezer’s “Island in the Sun” kept coming to mind. That is true, not a joke. And that’s what I’m going to share.

Trying to figure out why I think it is therapeutic was an interesting exercise. I thought about why animals, including human babies, have such a power to transport, and why the adults in my synagogue routinely fight over who gets to hold other people’s babies. What babies and animals seem to model so well is being present to the current moment, but more than that, they seem to have this magical power to pull us, too, into the current moment. And maybe that's what keeps us grown-up humans coming back for more, because we’re pretty bad at that part on our own. I think a key factor is that it’s very sensory, not confined to the mind. Think of holding a baby or playing with a dog (l’havdil…kind of) and how it totally engages your sense of touch, your sense of smell, your sense of sight, your sense of hearing, and (nope, don’t taste the baby!) -- eventually, probably, your sense of humor, your sense of surprise, your sense of patience, your sense of delight, your sense of being a piece in the tableau of life forms rather than the one responsible for carrying everything, and maybe even your sense that the world is big enough to contain everything you feel and wonder. 

It doesn’t undo heaviness, nor should it; it …mediates it or gives it nuance, somehow.

So. When I watch this video, I am very, very cuted by it and I have quite a sensory experience that fires off lots of neurons (or whatever those are that get fired) that are all outside of what I can generally touch by myself with my thoughts. It’s like this: “Ohhh, so furry! What would that feel like to touch! Oh wow, the monkey just really surprised me! That was so funny! I relate to what that monkey wants even though we are pretty different creatures. Wow, the sun is pretty. That fresh air looks delicious to breathe…“ And so on.

I would like to embed the video, but all I know is that that’s called “embedding,” not actually how to do it. Here’s where you can watch it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C3zgYW_FAM

I hope everyone is finding a way to connect to sources of strength and wellbeing, and the life-affirming feelings (if also sometimes tragic) of loving and being loved, today. I loved the spontaneous posts and hope that that was part of that. 

In parting I want to offer a poem I shared with some of you in February '10. I just re-read Jonah’s 2014 post about in-between-ness, and...yes, in-between-ness. In Feb ’10, there were a lot of in-between-nesses, a lot of interims. I felt in between what was happening and being able to comprehend what was happening; also in an interim where a heavy cloud was hiding my regular life and I didn't know what the new "regular" would be. Right now, I feel the in-between-ness of a day that brings back past Februarys while in doing so highlighting the passage of time. And I feel these little interludes, interims that come and go -- anniversary dates, Gregorian, lunar -- dipping briefly away from linear time into circular time, then back again.

Always with love and appreciation,

Anna

Interim
Denise Levertov

A black page of night
flutters: dream on or waken,
words will spring from darkness now,
gold-bright, to fill the hollow mind
laid still to hear them, as an iron cup
laid on the window-ledge, would fill with rain.
Not more alone
waking than sleeping, in darkness than in light,
yet it is now we can assume
an attitude more listening than longing,
extend invisible antennae towards
some intimation, echo, emanation
falling slowly like a destined feather
that lights at last before the feet
of hesitating fear. Not less alone
in city than in solitude, at least
this time—an hour or minute?—left between
dreaming and action, where the only glitter
is the soft gleam of words, affording
intimacy with each submerged regret,
awakes a new lucidity in pain,
so that with day we meet
familiar angels that were lately tears
and smile to know them only fears transformed.