So beautiful, and thoughtful. I almost didn't click on the videos, which would have been a real loss: the first one, especially, is a gift, and especially how it ends. It is wonderful how you weave Rovelli in. It feels as though, in response to this gift of attention to fluidity, one should be offering back some kind of connection to solidity. I don't know if that instinct is correct, but in case it is, here it is, a little: the feel of the floor beneath one's feet in a house, and the earth below that, going way, way, down. The Buddha's hand in so many representations, touching the earth in the Earth mudra. (Leaving aside the actual iconography.) William Carlos Williams and importance of things. All of that here too. Thanks for the beautiful essay.
Oh, thank you for this reminder...I went for a walk yesterday and had such a sense of how the recent rain was slowly percolating deep into the earth beneath my feet, and rising upwards into the clouds, and had a real, felt sense of moving through a 3-dimensional web of earth, water and air. Yes, the earth, we need that too!
I love this post Samantha, beautiful writing. Water - I cross the tidal River Suir here most days and it’s currently very swollen from all the rain that has (yes) fallen. It’s also very brown now too from land runoff.
Bas Jan Ader's drowning was almost inevitable in such a tiny a boat. Was it a death wish? He liked to play with watery imagery, canals and streams. Strange but rather sad. Those who cared for him (and there must have been some), partners, parents, friends et al, must have realised that his mission to sale to America was doomed. The darker side of water's power, at one moment beautiful, tranquil, inviting, life sustaining, and the other, brown, swollen rivers in flood sweeping all before them, and black roaring seas waiting to engulf you. The stuff of sweet dreams and nightmares.
Yes, it would seem so, but interestingly, in the documentary I linked to, his wife said it never crossed her mind he wouldn't make it. But when you see how tiny the boat was, and seen in the context of the rest of his work, yes, you can't help but think he saw it as his swan song. We'll never know.
So gorgeous, all of it. The falling, the water, the gravity, the miraculous. Indistinct, inevitable, yet always longing for the suspension to pause just a little longer. Such a beautiful meditation on the forces that move around us, that we too are a part of.
I loved your post today @freya rohn - how testing is the reluctance of this northern spring! Yours much more so than ours, by the sound of it. At least we have some wind-battered daffodils. It's the light and the birds that tell us the season has changed: the first puffins have been spotted rafting up just offshore, getting ready.
Lovely, Sam. The thought of time passing, our lives like falling like heavy water, and the contrast with other ways in which water behave made me think about what happens at the end of our lives, after our final pratfall, when no one can see the aftermath, like in Ader's films. Perhaps afterwards we move like water still, in more mysterious, unseen ways: clouds infused with our vapour lingering as memories in the minds of those who knew us?
Thanks for your writing. I like to find a calm moment to read them and give myself a little time to think.
So beautiful, and thoughtful. I almost didn't click on the videos, which would have been a real loss: the first one, especially, is a gift, and especially how it ends. It is wonderful how you weave Rovelli in. It feels as though, in response to this gift of attention to fluidity, one should be offering back some kind of connection to solidity. I don't know if that instinct is correct, but in case it is, here it is, a little: the feel of the floor beneath one's feet in a house, and the earth below that, going way, way, down. The Buddha's hand in so many representations, touching the earth in the Earth mudra. (Leaving aside the actual iconography.) William Carlos Williams and importance of things. All of that here too. Thanks for the beautiful essay.
Oh, thank you for this reminder...I went for a walk yesterday and had such a sense of how the recent rain was slowly percolating deep into the earth beneath my feet, and rising upwards into the clouds, and had a real, felt sense of moving through a 3-dimensional web of earth, water and air. Yes, the earth, we need that too!
“had a real, felt sense of moving through a 3-dimensional web of earth, water and air” — beautiful, and wonderful, too. This matters, so much.
I love this post Samantha, beautiful writing. Water - I cross the tidal River Suir here most days and it’s currently very swollen from all the rain that has (yes) fallen. It’s also very brown now too from land runoff.
The rain was drumming on our flat roof last night...It fell hard, as if from a very great height, in bag fat drops!
It might be a typo, but I love, “in bag fat drops!” 😄
Bagfuls of water - plop! :-D
Beautifully written. I had not come across the artist Bas Jan Ader before so I'm going to be reading and watching more about him now! Fascinating.
He was such an interesting artist! May you enjoy discovering more...
Bas Jan Ader's drowning was almost inevitable in such a tiny a boat. Was it a death wish? He liked to play with watery imagery, canals and streams. Strange but rather sad. Those who cared for him (and there must have been some), partners, parents, friends et al, must have realised that his mission to sale to America was doomed. The darker side of water's power, at one moment beautiful, tranquil, inviting, life sustaining, and the other, brown, swollen rivers in flood sweeping all before them, and black roaring seas waiting to engulf you. The stuff of sweet dreams and nightmares.
Yes, it would seem so, but interestingly, in the documentary I linked to, his wife said it never crossed her mind he wouldn't make it. But when you see how tiny the boat was, and seen in the context of the rest of his work, yes, you can't help but think he saw it as his swan song. We'll never know.
So gorgeous, all of it. The falling, the water, the gravity, the miraculous. Indistinct, inevitable, yet always longing for the suspension to pause just a little longer. Such a beautiful meditation on the forces that move around us, that we too are a part of.
I loved your post today @freya rohn - how testing is the reluctance of this northern spring! Yours much more so than ours, by the sound of it. At least we have some wind-battered daffodils. It's the light and the birds that tell us the season has changed: the first puffins have been spotted rafting up just offshore, getting ready.
Thanks so much Samantha--wind-battered daffodils and puffins! I love that.
Ohh to hold in present consciousness that my work is “always more about hope and longing than it ever [is] about arrival or success.”
What a marvelous meditation on water, Time, life, death, aspirations and teetering on the edge of realization. Inspired writing.
Lovely, Sam. The thought of time passing, our lives like falling like heavy water, and the contrast with other ways in which water behave made me think about what happens at the end of our lives, after our final pratfall, when no one can see the aftermath, like in Ader's films. Perhaps afterwards we move like water still, in more mysterious, unseen ways: clouds infused with our vapour lingering as memories in the minds of those who knew us?
Thanks for your writing. I like to find a calm moment to read them and give myself a little time to think.