Greetings,
Here is a fine article on Poetry and Meditation by Gary Snyder in Tricycle. Beyond wild.
Teasing the demonic
Wrestling the wrathful
Laughing with the lustful
Seducing the shy
Wiping dirty noses and sewing torn shirts
Sending philosophers home to their wives in time for dinner
Dousing bureaucrats in rivers
Taking mothers mountain climbing
Eating the ordinary
Metta.
I entertained visitors, fished the Glen Malure river in complete solitude, peeled potatoes and carrots for stews, painted watercolors, discussed road adventures with vagabonds, wrote and played chess by firelight.
Pawn takes pawn as players attempt to control the middle of the board attacking and defending positions simultaneously. It was about position and material. We made the necessary sacrifices after the beginning game through the middle game to the end game.
Andy, a German visitor said India was once lost in a chess game between two kings. We played in the dark of night illuminated by fireplace light as peat fires roared their way up the flue. Quick moving violent storms pummeled the place.
“That’s a dangerous move,” he said as my knight escaped a pin.
“Yes, but it’s elegant.”
“We destroy ourselves eventually.”
“Yes, as long as we enjoy the process. Your move.”
In the morning Susan related a dream from literature she was reading, by Brian Merriman, a merry man while doing her nails near the river.
“Have you heard about The Midnight Court?”
“No,” someone said. “Tell us.”
“It’s about a fellow who falls asleep and has a dream where he is taken before a court of women who condemn him to be punished for all the men in their knowledge. How women should have the right to marriage and sex but often meet with disappointment and rejection by men who could easily have become their lovers and husbands.”
The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers.
They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs and new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun and moon.
They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.
One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.
The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life.
Dance movement is motivated by emotional expression. Dance is about itself. The freedom of creation. A playful approach to meaning. Dance allows the viewer to interpret.
A young woman with delicate hands, perfect posture, a five pointed gold star painted on her forehead and scuffed white ballet slippers waiting for the train turned to me.
Did you hear Mercy Cunningham, the dancer died?
No. What have you heard?
I study dance, that’s how I know. He was amazing. Dance is all about ambiguity, poetry, and acceptance. He had independent detachment. He had creative imagination. He said dance was isolated yet cooperating and independent. And, he said, because he believed in the magic of dance, that when you dance for a fleeting moment you feel alive.
What do you see? I asked. I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space. It’s more than that, said a one legged amputee leaning against the wall, There are five rhythms in dance.
You start with a circle, it’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.
Really? said the woman. Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.
Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.
I see. And then, after chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.
Greetings,
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