Coax Your Mind
Who can look each day at a beautiful landscape in the distance
and not at some point want to explore it?
Who can look out at the ocean every morning
and never venture beyond your common horizon
when a boat I am offering you,
and even willing to do most most of the paddling?
It is good if something gnaws at your innards
The Holy, like a good poem, may enter you and coax your mind
to wade out to more interesting internal space
until you come to real terms with your potential.
This poem implies that you are the beautiful landscape and that life should awaken you to explore yourself. I read that Judith Jameson, director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, would tell her dancers: "You are not defined by your fingertips, or the top of your head, or the bottom of your feet. You are defined by you. You are the expanse. You are the infinity."And she went on to explain that this was really important for girls to hear because "somwhere between gym and lunch period, every girl has wanted to look pretty and have the moment she looks in the mirror and believes it". I suspect that was a nice thing to hear in a field (ballet) that is very much rigidly defined by the outward body, as opposed to the interal space - the potential infinity.
Who can look each day at a beautiful landscape in the distance
and not at some point want to explore it?
Who can look out at the ocean every morning
and never venture beyond your common horizon
when a boat I am offering you,
and even willing to do most most of the paddling?
It is good if something gnaws at your innards
The Holy, like a good poem, may enter you and coax your mind
to wade out to more interesting internal space
until you come to real terms with your potential.
This poem implies that you are the beautiful landscape and that life should awaken you to explore yourself. I read that Judith Jameson, director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, would tell her dancers: "You are not defined by your fingertips, or the top of your head, or the bottom of your feet. You are defined by you. You are the expanse. You are the infinity."And she went on to explain that this was really important for girls to hear because "somwhere between gym and lunch period, every girl has wanted to look pretty and have the moment she looks in the mirror and believes it". I suspect that was a nice thing to hear in a field (ballet) that is very much rigidly defined by the outward body, as opposed to the interal space - the potential infinity.
Photograph (2012) by Elena Shumilova
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