the wonder of small spaces
Dear friends:
So I got to Ireland yesterday, to start a retreat/residency for 3 weeks at an arts center in a small town by the sea. This is an unexpected gift, especially after such a year of adventure and surprise and transition.
On the flight to Cork yesterday, I noticed an an older Irish woman, someone I would call aunty, meaning she was significantly older than me and I would not think to call her by her first name. She was traveling with an even older grandfather. I helped her store her bag in the overhead compartment.
Then the flight continued and I slept and then we arrived into Cork, grey skies, green expanses, rain, yes - Ireland. The plane was full, the aisle narrow and I had to carefully help her with her bag and then get my bag down. Then I made to put my jacket on. I felt a tug and there she was holding the other sleeve of my jacket for me, so I could slide my arm in.
It’s easier, she said, in a small space.
Something about the way she said it. Something about the courtesy of someone holding your jacket for you. Something about all of it made me want to write an email and just share the moment.
It takes so little to make someone anyone feel at home, in presence, in encounter.
I walked down the plane’s stairs, bemused.
The rain was welcome.
Two other curious encounters have also found their way online, at the same time.
Encounters with Flamenco in Spain: an article I wrote for Stance on Dance, a publication edited by the lovely dancer Emmaly Wiederholt. It’s free and online. There is also a print issue available for purchase. It’s a beautiful issue, thoughtfully curated.
An interview on Byte Sized Blessings a podcast from Kirsten Rudberg, She asked me about magic and mystery. And that spooled into a profound conversation about the worlds we live in all at once and a mythic memory, a lucid dream seen one high noon in Bombay, that felt like a portal into other worlds, worlds where we all live - the memory and tactile-ness of these worlds often get erased by what we call the real world.
And I want to say, I am on a journey to believe that the worlds we dream, the worlds in which our creativity lives, the stillness we feel under a tree is just as real and in this world, these words, we can grow our true inexplicable silent loud songful selves.
subsé pehlé, at the beginning, in the first dark, the animal, left the shore, found the sea, loved the cave and became
song tree stone dance (goes the opening of The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects….)
I leave Cork this afternoon and head west, towards the sea.
And Saturday, if you are in Ballinskelligs, there is this:
But before I leave Cork:
I just passed this shop window that says:
I search the night sky, longing to explore, the endless possibilities, in hopes of something more…
yours in wonder
happy december.
Shebana
