parallels

I remember being so awestruck when I turned to this page of an O Magazine who knows how many years ago that I carefully removed it to tuck away in a folder (none of the pages have a date on them, hence not being able to pinpoint exactly what year it was). Something about the elegant movement captured by the upsweep of the garment, maybe the black and white shadows, or perhaps my sheer admiration of dancers made me linger over the picture before I stored it for future reference.


It surfaced in my head one morning in 2007 while working on a collage. My intent was to use only black, white and gray for the piece, I knew the dancer would be perfect for the flow of the goddess coming to life before me. Everything was assembling so beautifully until I realized I would have to destroy another’s poetic image in order to finish my own creation. With admiration, I finally began to cut for the sake of art producing what turned out to be an exquisite pregnant goddess. However, I felt a sense of loss as I no longer had the picture I actually treasured.

During my morning reading, I flipped to a page with a poem that stopped my breath. Much like that picture, I lingered over it, the words lush in their flow. Ramprasad, a Hindu poet, spoke of how much he loved and adored a beautiful dark beauty, his black darling who danced and seduced the world, how much he loved black and dancing. I thought of the black and white photograph of Martha Graham I clipped years ago…it had seduced me with its graceful shadowy movement though a still shot and suddenly made sense to me through a written piece that had nothing to do with it. But something about it was quite parallel. I continued to read only to discover that the black darling the poet was so enraptured with was Kali, the goddess of death which then tied me back to the collage because in a way, one thing died or was sacrificed to birth another.
 
When I examine all that has happened in the time I so gratefully have had on this earth, there are many congruent occurrences to note. I am very aware of how much is written into us that we aren’t aware of until we are. Right now, white calla lilies in clear glass vases are the cut flowers around my home; I have taken photos of them, many that aren’t that good. But there is one that is, one that I converted to black and white...it is not lost on me how much it resembles the dress in that magazine picture which, by the way, someone found, pulled and made sure it landed uncut on my desk. When things are meant to be, they just are.

As we dance through our days, people, things, opportunities ebb and flow. We win, we lose. We get, we give, give up give in then get up. We live each day moving something until the day we can no longer move anything. And while some things along the journey are clearly black or white, the many shades of gray soften the jagged edges as the seduction of quiet stillness continues to still my breath.

keep your peepers open!®