Two times on Instagram this week I stopped and let myself feel until some of the feelings found near-hit words to express them. But only near-hit words.
Robin Davis Studio (click over from the image to the video)
She’s named the tiny puppet Pocket, which is my favorite word - and describes the feelings its movements create in me. Pocket. Not as a literal definition. It’s the onomatopoeia of the alternating consonants and vowels that, when pronounced slowly and deliberately, makes the ending t almost a syllable in itself. The word moves from the lips, to the back and top of the throat, and forward again behind the teeth. It explores the whole mouth. I’ve always thought it is like observing a slender-limbed insect moving very slowly, and very deliberately. It is like watching it watch the world from it’s tiny point of view.
I have always been fascinated by how some puppets can take on life - more than simple animation. The puppeteer can imbue a dead object with the sense of breath, which seems to then be nothing more than the physical manifestation of curiosity. It is a story that writes itself because it is compelled by its own existence to make sense of itself.
Basking Sharks (click over from the image to the video)
There are so many adjectives that try to insert themselves into a description. Obscene is among them. But only with a kind of objectified-understanding an adult has for the kind of nakedness a child encounters with a sense of terror and fascination. A feeling that comes before shame, before the codification of all things proper and improper, good and bad, beautiful and ugly - but with the fledgling understanding of what is vulnerable, unexpectedly revealed.
I have been spending far too much time logged into streaming services. But reading is still challenging the days after chemotherapy. Movies are easy.
I was unexpectedly moved by the film Chef (2014). It was a bit of much needed escapism, but it also left me feeling warm and hopeful, and asking myself about personal goals and what it means to be successful. A dream cast. Jon Favreau in the lead, and Oliver Platt appears as the internet food critic. I’ve never warmed to one of John Leguizamo’s characters more.
(The father/son relationship features more than the trailer might indicate.)
There is No Recipe for Dancing
Nowness is a treasure chest for beautiful work. I can’t embed the film here, but There is No Recipe for Dancing is a 3 minute dance/documentary about the Kadar Khristan’s experience of being stabbed in the back (not figuratively) and what dance means to him now. I normally don’t care for filmed dance sequences - but this sequence was made over a three week period with the filmmaker, as a filmed work.
It made me wonder why I am not dancing more.
May Swenson. Nature: Poems Old and New. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
I don’t see the sunrise over the ocean from here, but I do see it rise most mornings from the far side of the lake. Reading Swenson’s poem, I have to admit that I may not be paying attention unless it is offering me beauty… and that is a huge loss.
Have a great week!
And if you stumbled on something you want to share with me, please do!