Dying/broken/forgiven.... now I begin

Born: 17-06-56....gemini.... monkey
re-born: 3-09-80
born again\found: 14-04-08
other notable dates: 10-03-68; 03-09-87; 23-03-96;
1-05-98; 31-01-02; 5-04-04

Interests: movement, stressed/transgressive embodiment, lived experience (body\space\time\relation)
expression ( word, dance, text, image, story, music, poetics)
learning, yielding......

Hopes for the blog:
offer up the wild intersectedness of lived experience and engage others in creative, expressive, perhaps irreverant, hopefully playful, and respectful encounters....
enact kindness
create moments of pause for disclosure, discovery, stillness

Thursday, February 5, 2009

How to write about a place so beautiful.....

I am going to follow the lead of one of my favourite philosophers...when I write I discover what it is I wish to say...

I am visiting a beautiful place. I'm here in Norway on a work-based assignment of a sort...but in many ways it is a perk of my job. I was here summer, 2007,and now I am here in winter and it is an enchanted time:twilight days, sky that is so gray it is white and so white it is gray....
mist /ground fog that hangs low enough to whisper, yet is not wet enough to be mist or fog...I grew up in a place with lots of mist and fog, so it's not like it is new phenomenon--yet, here, it feels new. It hangs differently even as it is familiar
in some ways
it does have that feeling of the little cat feet
and it does sit looking over harbours and cities
and trees and houses and hills...

I feel it and see it as a shimmering shivering haze, almost dream-like, even in the clearest most startling and unsettling open spaces, when the cold is chalk screech cold yet filled with uncanny quiet, cold enough to keep everything still..even the wind... no breeze....time suspended, like something holding its breath without the distress...

the trees are silver, it feels like I am inside a snow globe or a bell, the hush is palpable...

The folklore here tells of people trekking and touring out on the land... folks going out into the wild spaces to be with the elements, extreme conditions nevertheless sought, the journey into the vast silence, a metaphysical quest, as much a journey inward. There is talk about people coming from these treks, perhaps encountering other humans sooner than is warranted given where they have been, a diver coming to the surface too soon, not giving ample time for decompression. The language used to describe their countenance is sublime.... it holds out a divining rod to me: "his face had an alarming stillness" ...such are the words of encounter...

there is something about those words that resonates and vibrates and hovers, hauntingly, still just out of reach
Still... I wonder how to write about a place so beautiful it makes me want to ....
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. JonFebruary 9, 2009 at 3:19 AM

    "his face had an alarming stillness"

    great line... terse and squat and full of potential... like a hanging twilight... when depth perception becomes less valuable and the still world stirs... slowly stirs... like a place so beautiful it makes me want to pause...

    ReplyDelete
  2. JonFebruary 9, 2009 at 3:20 AM

    p.s.

    like how you've used the text color to accentuate the feeling and the mood...

    ReplyDelete
  3. HarlequinFebruary 9, 2009 at 9:39 AM

    Hopper--- can't tell you how thrilled I am to get the comment on the colour of the text...yay and hooray....
    and that phrase is quite amazing, isn't it... I will be returing to it, I know... it has begun to inhabit my inner landscape, now, and will move and breathe in there at will ....I can feel it and I like how it is seeping and drifting ....

    and this is an amazingly beautiful place... my felt sense of attention and wonder here has been a nice part of being here...
    thanks for visiting
    Harlequin

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)