Words meme
Jul. 6th, 2009 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseI got mine from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moria923. If you want five words from me, say so.
Everything else is behind the
Friendship. Beauty. Arts. Health. Conversation.
These are hard ones.
Arts.
Weirdly enough, this is the easiest. The arts are anything created by the hand of a human being that inspires what Arthur Koestler called the "Aaaah" response. If it's not created -- and created can include things like collages with natural or found objects or, say, flower arrangements -- then it's not art.
It doesn't have to be something that inspires the "Aaaah" response in me. I know people who are profoundly moved by artists and their works that I look at (or hear or taste or smell or touch), and the only response it inspires in me is "WTF?"
As far as the arts go in my personal life, they are important. At the moment, visual art is winning, both as something I'm trying to create and as the art I'm seeking. But there have been times in my life when it's been music driving me. I trained as an actor. I love to dance (though I'm profoundly bad at it). And from trying these things for myself, I've developed a deep appreciation for the people who do it well.
My biggest regret about unemployment is that I can't buy a season ticket to anything, not the dance festival at the Kennedy Center, nor Shakespeare Theater's season, nor The Washington Opera (and they're doing Porgy and Bess this year!).
Most of all, the arts reward depth of knowledge and repeated experience. I may hear a musical group today that I like, but the next time I hear them, even if the set list is identical, the experience will be different -- maybe better, maybe worse.
There's a thrill in discovering something new, a painting one's never seen before, a dish one's never tasted, but there's also something to be said for knowing this is the best chocolate mousse one's ever had because there are decades of chocolate mousses in one's memories.
Beauty
Arthur Koestler wrote about two responses in human beings. One is the sense of displacement which, if presented correctly, begets the "Ha-ha" response. Laughter, comes from expecting one thing and getting another.
The other is the sense of profound rightness which he called the "Aaah" response. It's heard when one experiences a moment of deep beauty.
(He then goes on to talk about scientific discovery being a combination of the two where finding something unexpected leads to a conclusion of deep beauty provoking the "Aha!" response.)
Beauty is everywhere all the time. Most of the time, we don't let ourselves notice it. We become inured to it because it's there all the time.
People laugh when I say that every time I walk into my apartment, my throat catches when I see the cupola of the Capitol. But it's true. There is something truly beautiful about not only the building, but what it stands for.
Mind you, I know that the people who work there are often clowns of the lowest common denominator. I like to think, however, that most of our representatives feel themselves surrounded by beauty and do their best to perpetuate it in law.
Real things are beautiful. When I was a kid, I bought a print of Romney's "Miss Willoughby" and hung it on my bedroom wall. I saw it daily, yet, when I go into the National Gallery and see it live, it strikes me anew. No print will ever match the original.
Several of my deepest memories deal with beauty. When I was seven my parents asked me what I wanted for my eighth birthday. (Please bear in mind, we were living in London thanks to Dad's job at the time.) I asked to go to Paris for the day to see the Mona Lisa because we'd been talking about it in class.
Parental units wandered off, found that there were some relatively cheap day trips available through the USO, and got me what I asked for.
The Mona Lisa was cool, and I conducted my very scientific experiment about whether or not the eyes followed me in the room. I realize exactly how lucky I was because when I saw it again, at fourteen, she'd been placed behind bullet proof glass.
But that's not what stays with me. I remember being surprised at how BIG the Eiffel Tower was and loving Sacre Coeur and all the touristy things that make Paris a city people want to visit.
However, if you want to hear about beauty, it was walking past the ticket vendor at the Louvre, looking up those grand stairs and seeing the Nike of Samothrace. I had no preparation for it, the way I did with the Mona Lisa. I'd been to art galleries before, but I associated art with painting.
The memory of walking up those stairs, approaching that beauty, brings tears to my eyes, but I truly have no words.
Beauty is always new.
I had so much to say on this, but somehow, it all boils down to this:
Beauty surrounds us, and beauty is always new.
Conversation
It's not just talking. Two or more people can monologue at each other and have an illusion of conversation, but, like beauty, conversation is always new.
It's also always a give and take. Someone may steer a conversation, whether because it's a salon or for political reasons or there are topics to avoid in this company, but at its heart, conversation is a spontaneous sharing of thoughts on a particular topic.
The topic may be whether Brad and Angelina are going to have another child. Me, I don't care, but for some people that's an endlessly renewable subject of conversation.
At its best, conversation opens minds and hearts. People are singular, but tend to live in groups. Conversation is what lets us find our tribe. Mine seems to be one where people joke, make puns, and talk about politics, law, polyamory, engineering, performances, museums, music, dogs, children, food, exercise, costumes, human rights, and all manner of things.
Health
A person is healthy when they can do exactly what they want to do at the moment they want to do it and know their body will permit it.
By that standard, I'm not healthy. If I find myself standing next to Jason Bourne or James Bond on a train platform, my reflexes are such that I will be the innocent bystander who gets killed.
But I still think that's the standard to try for. So, I take my vitamins and my heart medication. I walk a lot. I do yoga for flexibility and use light weights to build my strength. I listen to what my body tells me to eat (and ignore it on the days it decides that donuts will be my only food).
I do sudoku and the occasional crossword. I miss having people to play games with, although I didn't it all that much even when they were around.
Mental health is as important as physical and for me they are tightly intertwined. If I get enough sunlight, exercise, and nutrition, I don't need anti-depressants. My daily walks aren't just exercises in beauty or explorations of art; they are the basis of health.
I wish Boston were as good for me physically as DC is. Both are walkable cities, but the ice in Boston is more debilitating than the heat in DC, much to my own surprise.
Friendship
I don't know whether I am capable of being a good friend. I always feel like I'm taking from everyone around me and that I never give enough.
My models for friendship are skewed by all my moves. I sloughed people off as we went from place to place. It was rare that I got close to people and rarer that I remained in contact with them once we got orders to somewhere else.
Mom kept a Christmas list, but so few of those people were people we knew. I value the ones that we did manage more with, but they are of my parents' generation or older and they are slipping away from me quickly.
One of my high school classmates from Brussels is the person, outside my family, whom I've known longest. I know there are others from earlier that I could possibly renew acquaintances with, but I really don't know how.
Beginning with drama school, I have people who are still in my life. One thing that I hope to do when I'm employed again is get a land line so that I can make calls overseas. I want to talk to friends. I miss them.
Beyond that, finding my tribe in Boston has been the most profound thing. I bless the internet for letting me stay in touch and share my life (and more importantly share theirs) when I was called to California.
I still feel like I'm bad at this.tpau reminded me that it's been years since we've seen each other. I have another friend who's invited me to her birthday party in Connecticut next weekend. I've known her for fifteen years, but I can't afford to go. I'll call her this week and explain, but I feel that I'm being a bad friend by not finding a way.
It's hard for me to make the first move, send the first letter or email or make the first phone call. I'm convinced people don't want to hear from me unless they call me first. It always feels like I'm imposing on them, if I start it. Yet, I'm always relieved and feel blessed when I get a phone call, email, or letter from someone in my life.
moria923. If you want five words from me, say so.Everything else is behind the
Friendship. Beauty. Arts. Health. Conversation.
These are hard ones.
Arts.
Weirdly enough, this is the easiest. The arts are anything created by the hand of a human being that inspires what Arthur Koestler called the "Aaaah" response. If it's not created -- and created can include things like collages with natural or found objects or, say, flower arrangements -- then it's not art.
It doesn't have to be something that inspires the "Aaaah" response in me. I know people who are profoundly moved by artists and their works that I look at (or hear or taste or smell or touch), and the only response it inspires in me is "WTF?"
As far as the arts go in my personal life, they are important. At the moment, visual art is winning, both as something I'm trying to create and as the art I'm seeking. But there have been times in my life when it's been music driving me. I trained as an actor. I love to dance (though I'm profoundly bad at it). And from trying these things for myself, I've developed a deep appreciation for the people who do it well.
My biggest regret about unemployment is that I can't buy a season ticket to anything, not the dance festival at the Kennedy Center, nor Shakespeare Theater's season, nor The Washington Opera (and they're doing Porgy and Bess this year!).
Most of all, the arts reward depth of knowledge and repeated experience. I may hear a musical group today that I like, but the next time I hear them, even if the set list is identical, the experience will be different -- maybe better, maybe worse.
There's a thrill in discovering something new, a painting one's never seen before, a dish one's never tasted, but there's also something to be said for knowing this is the best chocolate mousse one's ever had because there are decades of chocolate mousses in one's memories.
Beauty
Arthur Koestler wrote about two responses in human beings. One is the sense of displacement which, if presented correctly, begets the "Ha-ha" response. Laughter, comes from expecting one thing and getting another.
The other is the sense of profound rightness which he called the "Aaah" response. It's heard when one experiences a moment of deep beauty.
(He then goes on to talk about scientific discovery being a combination of the two where finding something unexpected leads to a conclusion of deep beauty provoking the "Aha!" response.)
Beauty is everywhere all the time. Most of the time, we don't let ourselves notice it. We become inured to it because it's there all the time.
People laugh when I say that every time I walk into my apartment, my throat catches when I see the cupola of the Capitol. But it's true. There is something truly beautiful about not only the building, but what it stands for.
Mind you, I know that the people who work there are often clowns of the lowest common denominator. I like to think, however, that most of our representatives feel themselves surrounded by beauty and do their best to perpetuate it in law.
Real things are beautiful. When I was a kid, I bought a print of Romney's "Miss Willoughby" and hung it on my bedroom wall. I saw it daily, yet, when I go into the National Gallery and see it live, it strikes me anew. No print will ever match the original.
Several of my deepest memories deal with beauty. When I was seven my parents asked me what I wanted for my eighth birthday. (Please bear in mind, we were living in London thanks to Dad's job at the time.) I asked to go to Paris for the day to see the Mona Lisa because we'd been talking about it in class.
Parental units wandered off, found that there were some relatively cheap day trips available through the USO, and got me what I asked for.
The Mona Lisa was cool, and I conducted my very scientific experiment about whether or not the eyes followed me in the room. I realize exactly how lucky I was because when I saw it again, at fourteen, she'd been placed behind bullet proof glass.
But that's not what stays with me. I remember being surprised at how BIG the Eiffel Tower was and loving Sacre Coeur and all the touristy things that make Paris a city people want to visit.
However, if you want to hear about beauty, it was walking past the ticket vendor at the Louvre, looking up those grand stairs and seeing the Nike of Samothrace. I had no preparation for it, the way I did with the Mona Lisa. I'd been to art galleries before, but I associated art with painting.
The memory of walking up those stairs, approaching that beauty, brings tears to my eyes, but I truly have no words.
Beauty is always new.
I had so much to say on this, but somehow, it all boils down to this:
Beauty surrounds us, and beauty is always new.
Conversation
It's not just talking. Two or more people can monologue at each other and have an illusion of conversation, but, like beauty, conversation is always new.
It's also always a give and take. Someone may steer a conversation, whether because it's a salon or for political reasons or there are topics to avoid in this company, but at its heart, conversation is a spontaneous sharing of thoughts on a particular topic.
The topic may be whether Brad and Angelina are going to have another child. Me, I don't care, but for some people that's an endlessly renewable subject of conversation.
At its best, conversation opens minds and hearts. People are singular, but tend to live in groups. Conversation is what lets us find our tribe. Mine seems to be one where people joke, make puns, and talk about politics, law, polyamory, engineering, performances, museums, music, dogs, children, food, exercise, costumes, human rights, and all manner of things.
Health
A person is healthy when they can do exactly what they want to do at the moment they want to do it and know their body will permit it.
By that standard, I'm not healthy. If I find myself standing next to Jason Bourne or James Bond on a train platform, my reflexes are such that I will be the innocent bystander who gets killed.
But I still think that's the standard to try for. So, I take my vitamins and my heart medication. I walk a lot. I do yoga for flexibility and use light weights to build my strength. I listen to what my body tells me to eat (and ignore it on the days it decides that donuts will be my only food).
I do sudoku and the occasional crossword. I miss having people to play games with, although I didn't it all that much even when they were around.
Mental health is as important as physical and for me they are tightly intertwined. If I get enough sunlight, exercise, and nutrition, I don't need anti-depressants. My daily walks aren't just exercises in beauty or explorations of art; they are the basis of health.
I wish Boston were as good for me physically as DC is. Both are walkable cities, but the ice in Boston is more debilitating than the heat in DC, much to my own surprise.
Friendship
I don't know whether I am capable of being a good friend. I always feel like I'm taking from everyone around me and that I never give enough.
My models for friendship are skewed by all my moves. I sloughed people off as we went from place to place. It was rare that I got close to people and rarer that I remained in contact with them once we got orders to somewhere else.
Mom kept a Christmas list, but so few of those people were people we knew. I value the ones that we did manage more with, but they are of my parents' generation or older and they are slipping away from me quickly.
One of my high school classmates from Brussels is the person, outside my family, whom I've known longest. I know there are others from earlier that I could possibly renew acquaintances with, but I really don't know how.
Beginning with drama school, I have people who are still in my life. One thing that I hope to do when I'm employed again is get a land line so that I can make calls overseas. I want to talk to friends. I miss them.
Beyond that, finding my tribe in Boston has been the most profound thing. I bless the internet for letting me stay in touch and share my life (and more importantly share theirs) when I was called to California.
I still feel like I'm bad at this.
tpau reminded me that it's been years since we've seen each other. I have another friend who's invited me to her birthday party in Connecticut next weekend. I've known her for fifteen years, but I can't afford to go. I'll call her this week and explain, but I feel that I'm being a bad friend by not finding a way.It's hard for me to make the first move, send the first letter or email or make the first phone call. I'm convinced people don't want to hear from me unless they call me first. It always feels like I'm imposing on them, if I start it. Yet, I'm always relieved and feel blessed when I get a phone call, email, or letter from someone in my life.
