YOU CAN

Sunday, May 26, 2013

work: activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.

I think the ways in which life works on us is one of the most sacred ways in which beauty is instilled in our bones. Life has this way of acting on our bodies. Life has control we don't have. It does things to us. Recently, I have been rubbing almond oil all over my skin when I get out of the shower. Skin- that outermost layer of the body, the largest organ, the entrance. Skin is the part of the body we have most accessible to look at, study, feel, touch. There are so many other changes going on that we are not visually aware of. When I sit there in a towel and my underwear and massage my skin, I notice the markings of life like small bruises and ingrown hairs, the shifting and coming and going of weight and fat and muscle, the paleness of winter months and the sun kissed color of summer, the softness and roughness, wrinkles, thinness/thickness of skin, pronouncing veins on my hands, the cellulite on my thighs, the freckles along my arms, the size of my bones and my organs having grown from when I was a child, watching my breasts grown down, surrendering to the pull from the center of the Earth. It is endless and I am always so inspired by all that is happening in and on my body at any moment. It informs me. It is my teacher. 

My hair is darker. When I was a child it was white. I hope one day I come full circle.

I am listening to Patti Smith. She is someone who seems to have embraced the life's doing to her. She just let it all happen to her and it is from there that she made work. It's possibly why we all love her work so much. So much of society these days is about fighting life's doing, about taking that control back in an obsessive way- 

God forbid we are strong AND weak. God forbid we are fortified by the strength of our own beings and our own power and simultaneously softened and humbled by all the shit that is thrown at us within a life time. 

And if god forbid it, then call me a sinner because I want it. I want to be strong and healthy and vibrant and powerful. I also want to experience weakness, failure, pain, scars, and the ever-increasing proximity to death. Because, to me, that is as beautiful as I can possibly be. And ya'll know I LOVE BEAUTY.