mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Corporalita
July 19, 2013
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Leonardo, the maestro, was guided by core principals. Cultivation of grace ambidexterity, fitness, and poise were central to Da Vincian thought. He viewed healing as “restoration of discordant elements” in a person. His copious notes on personal responsibility for our own health and well being were left for history. Many think of the Mona Lisa smile as his signature work, but probably the best known of all his art work is the anatomical range of motion dude in a circle and square known as Vitruvian Man. His study of anatomy was accompanied by observation of his own body in relation to his wellness and fitness routine. His self portraits are studies in facial anatomy as well as in painting technique.
He advised people to dine, not eat. One of his many specialities was preparing vast feasts and party catering for wealthy Florentines. He collected knowledge about food and nutrition, recording recipes. He was known about town as having “more than infinite grace in every action”. His cultivation of effortless poise and ambidexterity in his own body made him famous in a rock star way. Florentines would come out on the street for the thrill of seeing Leonardo walking. His notebooks reflect a focus on balance, posture, and centering.
His favorite metaphor was the human body. It is also my own. If you consider any entity it will have a head, a heart, a circulatory system, consumption, and processing of waste. It will have dynamic balance and movement. It will present itself as open or closed, happy or sad. It will have chronic maladies and moods, a backbone, and sharp or weak senses. Often the right hand will not know what the left hand is doing. Next time you need to analyze an institution or business use this metaphor to create a picture in your mind. Ponder one of the maestro’s most famous observations, “every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness.” At this moment, gentle reader, can you see how this applies to you?
Vitruvian Man
Art and Practice
April 4, 2013
This month many writers are writing a poem a day in NaPoWriMo..the poetry challenge. I am accomplished in a few expressive ways, but I have not visited my poet for years. I was a prolific song writer as a teenager, and wrote poetry every day of some kind. I am a language fan, loving words because they sound funny or because they have obscure specific meanings. Being poetic, or even doing rhymes as improvisational humor, sharpens the wit, grows the vocabulary and enhances connections and metaphoric images.
When I was young I heard my father recite the Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W Service. He knew it by heart. After a couple of drinks he liked to sing, dance or recite that poem. It was always entertaining. He was a research scientist by profession, but my parents loved music and dance more than anything. We had a player piano which was the scene of many sing a long parties. What was truly admirable about my parents was their artistry. They had regular suburban lives, but my dad was an accomplished musician, and my mother designed and executed both landscape environments and fashion with amazing professionalism. My mother was a prize-winning floral arranger, and avid flower show horticulturist.
I was encouraged , and in some cases forced, to practice art. Piano was a mandatory 30 minutes every day of my life, and a legal pad sheet of cursive handwriting had to be inspected by my father each night. I eventually realized I could recycle some of the handwriting, but there was no faking the piano. My guitar and voice lessons came with mandatory practice sessions when I was in high school. I learned the power of practice at a very young age. Discipline is never natural to kids and maybe my parents overdid the whole rigidity thing. Today, however, I thank Dick and Ruby Morse, the living artists, who gave me the self confidence to know that I can be any kind of artist I care to be. My art will reflect my practice, and with practice I will improve. All poems, all songs, all dances are alive and need to be brought forth. Practice is the vehicle in which they travel into the light.
Holiday Botanical Cheer
December 4, 2012
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holidays in bloom
tree in conservatory
season blooming
holiday color
art glass in conservatory
gingerbread house
oh tanenbaum
These are a few of my favorite shots from my visit to Phipps Conservatory last year at this time. I wish you a festive and well designed season.
Ishvara-Pranidhana
November 16, 2012
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PSO at Heinz Hall
Last year I was very lucky to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra perform Handel’s Messiah as a fully staged opera. Everything about it was remarkable, even the serendipity of finding an excellent seat the day of the performance by just noticing the box office while I was on a walk. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but the Heinz Hall was new to me. Syria Mosque where I saw them in the 1960’s was gone like Forbes Field. In the lobby there was a great display about the life of Handel and the composition of the Messiah. He signed it SDG, in other words, he gave full credit to God for the music. I had seen this phrase before. It was written in German (those incredibly fancy letters you can’t read) on the outside of the school in Langweis, Switzerland, a small alpine village where my friend Steffi Burger lives. I love all that writing on the outside of old Swiss buildings, including hex signs to protect the contents of the buildings. They declare their faith and ask for protection in bold ( but hard to read) statements. I had some trouble with the reading, but was sure God was involved (most of them are about God and work) so I asked my friend, who also could not read it. We asked Walter Engle, whose family had crossed the Davos pass with their cows to settle the area centuries ago. He informed us that it said all glory to God (SDG).
School in Langweis
The protestant reformation was very into this idea and that is why it landed on the wall of the school. I relate it to the Niyama, or internal practice, of surrender to God as it is written in Sanskrit, Ishvara-Pranidhana. Apparently Handel went into a kind of trance and did speed composition under the heavy influence of spirit when he wrote the Messiah, signed it SDG and everyone knew what he meant. Bach was into this also. In yoga practice Ishvara is about trusting the divine flow, not so different from thy will be done. I wonder if by being a big student of linguistics I have stumbled upon the lowest common denominator of all religions. Surrender to God.
The Personal Service of Farming
October 31, 2012
scarecrow
What are the personal services you use in daily life? You may not be aware of all of them. If you buy prepared foods, that preparation has been done for you. You know if you hire a child care helper or manicurist that you are buying personal services. It is hard to find all the ways others contribute skill and time to our daily lives. Compared to primitive self reliance our modern lifestyle is comprised of paying more for labor and transportation than we pay for goods. Many have lost the skills needed to make anything from scratch. Farming in the US is a prime example. We are running out of people who know how to grow food as this profession declines rapidly in young people. If we don’t train or import some people to do the service of farming we will face serious problems.
My grandparents owned a farm when I knew them so I was exposed to the milk cow, the beef cows, the pigs, the gardens, and even to the butter churn. I lived in the city of Tulsa but considered the grandparents spread in Arkansas where was assistant farmer on the weekends to be extremely romantic. I rode a mule and shot a rifle. I thought of myself as very Annie Oakley when I was about 5. My parents had grown up without modern 1950’s conveniences and liked the idea of jet setting rather than farming. They enjoyed the country club and the University Club, and garden club, and host of other urban activities that Tulsa and Pittsburgh offered them. They did not seem lazy to me, but they certainly had a different style when it came to personal services than my grandparents had. There was no way they would ever own a mule or live next to a barn. They were over all of that. They were urban, upwardly mobile, and believed themselves to be super liberated. I suppose they were.
Every generation acquires some new skills and drops others that no longer serve the moment. It is a great idea to stay abreast of technology, move with the times, and accept the reality of now. In some phases of life, however, it is healthy, good, and indeed necessary to play a creative skillful part in carefully designing reality. If one chops no wood and carries no water the disconnection from source becomes disabling. The spirit has no dwelling in a world that offers only convenience. The soul requires art, and the spirit creates those artful moments that last in memory. One’s own self realization can’t be purchased, downloaded or installed. There is no service that can impart the satisfaction derived from self expression. Once practiced, polished and realized each one of us has a gift of powerful personal charism to offer to all the sentient beings. We can only hope that some young Americans find a vocation in farming.
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