At least it’s beautiful when the feminine divine is completely enraged. Does someone point out the real beauty to us? Will it help us shift into what is good?
My cousin sent me this viral video today— a bharatanatyam and hip-hop fusion dance. Laughing and smiling is a good break from roaring.
This morning’s paper held rage on page after page, of course, and I had to turn a dozen pages to get to the story about the new gun law. Even that was just a glimmer of good, with so little heft left over in it after the necessary political compromises. But count it: one for love.
There’s a point, I think, in my reflection on this moment post-Roe v Wade about the work of poets and artists, which is to point out what creative energy is.
Once it is pointed out to you, there’s no unknowing it. With just one finger, count how many things this famous Odissi dancer, Bijayini Satpathy, shows us: worlds upon worlds.
She has been posting beautiful short dances from Bryce Canyon on her Instagram, and she was just at the Met Museum last month as artist-in-residence. Each place and time is a new world.
Keep remembering as an artist what tools you have. Remember actively. Sit with them. What you have at your fingertip, offer.
from The Lie, by Sir Walter Ralegh …Say to the court, it glows And shines like rotten wood; Say to the church, it shows What’s good, and doth no good: If church and court reply, Then give them both the lie… Tell zeal it wants devotion; Tell love it is but lust: Tell time it is but motion; Tell flesh it is but dust: And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lie… Tell fortune of her blindness; Tell nature of decay; Tell friendship of unkindness; Tell justice of delay: And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie… So, when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing —although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing— Stab at thee he that will, No stab the soul can kill.
poet | artist 
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