Audrey Louise Reynolds

Audrey Louise Reynolds, A Fashionable Selby Film from the selby on Vimeo.

Searching for Stability

"We tend to become tense and stiff when we feel unstable but this is unhelpful - rigid structures topple more easily than responsive ones. The principle concern in balances is to develop poses slowly, steadily and with quiet stability."

-- Peter Blackaby Intelligent Yoga

Balance Face

Brilliant photo via  orbityoga
from South Dakota, 1959.

Do you have a concentration face?

Nice little exercise in awareness, notice which bits of your body get involved unnecessarily when you are trying to complete a new task. For example when trying to wiggle just your left big toe, does your right big toe try and join the party? When balancing do you stick your tongue out or clench your jaw?

Your body is one big conversation. When something is challenging or new sometimes your methods of communication misfire or get their wires crossed. The more you practice the new movement the better at communicating you will become.

Shedding Skin

“The skin biopsy was the first stage to creating the artwork. It was the moment when I thought OK this is real. It was a proper procedure. It wasn’t overly intrusive – it didn’t hurt or anything – it’s just a case of sterilising a part of my arm and cutting out a chunk of skin.

About two weeks later we converged at the Institute of Neurology to look at the stains and the actual skin that had been processed. They were stained in particular colours; a purple, minty green, blue and a pinky colour. They looked amazing – they just looked like paintings. I was really blown away by all the detail. What we created was me!”

-- Ghostpoet on the making of his latest album Shedding Skin.

Found via it's nice that. 

Maryanne Casasanta

But what if the truth is neither in the represented nor in the representation? What if the truth is in its material configuration? To participate in an image rather than merely identify with it could perhaps abolish this relation. This would mean participating in the material of the image as well as in the desires and forces it accumulates. How about acknowledging that this image is not some ideological misconception, but a thing simultaneously couched in affect and availability, a fetish made of crystals and electricity, animated by our wishes and fears, a perfect embodiment of its own conditions of existence? It doesn’t represent reality. It is a fragment of the real world. It is a thing just like any other—a thing like you and me. 

--Hito Steyerl

Work by Maryanne Casasanta.

Wild Women

I went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival at the Union Chapel this weekend and loved this film! For California-based Faith Dickey mastering the fine art of slacklining and highlining is a passion.

She set the women’s world record for highlining length (a full 345 feet of pure balance and fear mastery) in Moab, Utah. She also set a record for highlining height at 4,000 feet up from the valley bottom in the Swiss Alps. Faith also has accomplished 30 free solos (highlining without an attached safety leash), the longest of which was just over 91 feet.
Can you imagine?

I've been dabbling with this (at very low heights!) and it has to be one of the best balance tools i've ever tried.  Balance is so dynamic and there is no getting away from that on one of these. I like this one...gibbon-slacklines

Here's a clip of Faith in action from polishedproject.

He could use the bridge, but no. I like his style.
Lesson learnt: You have to choose to vary your movement!

“Don't confuse symmetry with balance.”

― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Cartoon

Saturday Poem

Among the Rocks

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,

      This autumn morning! How he sets his bones

To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet

For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

      Listening the while, where on the heap of stones

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;

      Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows.

If you loved only what were worth your love,

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:

      Make the low nature better by your throes!

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

 

--  Robert Browning

one old and one new

by Lauren Spencer King for ArtBookStand

There are impossible scribblings in nature, written neither by men nor by devils ... Who knows whether this tumult of triangles inscribed in stone, first brought about by nature and then by art, does not contain one of the secret cyphers of the universe?

Roger Caillois, The Writing of Stones. 1970.

Apophyllite specimen from bijoux et minéraux.

Recipe: Natural Home Cleaning

All-Purpose Cleaner
1/2 cup vinegar
1/4 cup baking soda (or 2 teaspoons Borax)
1/2 gallon (2 liters) water
Mix all ingredients into water in bucket. Store and keep in spray bottles.

Tough Scrub
1 cup baking soda
1/4 cup salt
10 drops citrus essential oil
5 drops tea tree essential oil
Combine all the ingredients and store in an airtight tub.

Dusting Spray
1 cup distilled water
3 drops essential oils
Combine in a spray bottle and use with a cotton cloth.

Degreaser
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup baking soda
5 to 10 drops citrus essential oils
Combine to make a paste and use a damp cloth to wipe off.

Glass Cleaner
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 gallon warm water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Mix in bucket, store solution in spray bottles.

All found via Kinfolk. The glass cleaner is a gem!
(image by me)

Home Play

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity,
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

—Mary Oliver

Movement is something that happens while you are getting something else accomplished...

These images made me giggle at first, but then they bought to mind a little something Katy Bowman had to say in this podcast for Liberated Body and now I think these vintage ladies were on to something....

"Remember you are an animal walking around in a zoo. Reflexively your body is always trying to conserve energy. The decision to shuck convenience has to be a choice. You are going to have to choose to get out of your couch and sit on the floor. You’re not really in a cage, you’ve put yourself in- there’s no lock, it’s habit. You can go outside whenever you want.

Movement is way easier to get in your life than exercise. Exercise takes time away from your family living. It takes a drive, a shower, a special outfit, equipment. It’s not as easy as. “I’m making breakfast anyway, I can make it on the floor? I’m walking on this path anyway, why don’t I just walk on the grass just 6 inches to the left? I’m going to the bathroom anyway, why not put my feet up on this squat platform?”

Because movement is not exercise, you have the potential to move all day long. I have no more time, I’m doing this podcast now so I could be sitting in front of my computer, or I could be standing and doing a calf stretch, and squatting a bit. Once you start thinking that way you can really move all day long even if you can’t go anywhere....

...The real difference between exercise and movement would be anytime you are doing movement for the purpose of reaping a health benefit, that’s exercise. While movement is something that happens while you are getting something else accomplished."

--Katy Bowman via Liberated Body.

a piece of quartz

My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘life and no escape.'

Anne Carson, Plainwater.

"You can ask yourself, What’s it like to be me? You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is."

— Bill Murray

Sunday Tune

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

Sunday Tune

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

Saturday Poem

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.   

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

the palm of my hand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

 

-- Maya Angelou

Saturday Cartoon

Good use of chair!
Gifs by Donald Christie for Ally Capellino.

No Guts, No Heart, No Glory

I went to see No Guts, No Heart, No Glory by Common Wealth Theater at The South Bank Centre last night (it's on as part of the Women of the World Festival) and I HIGHLY recommend going to see it.

It is a site-specific performance (originally staged in a boxing gym in Bradford) based on interviews with Muslim Female Boxers and collaboration with the five actors in the piece. Although the performance represents a young Muslim female experience, I think it's content will resonate with anyone who has ever been young, has a body, fears, frustrations and dreams (i.e. all of us).
From a movement perspective it was just pure joy to watch, especially the mesmerising steps of boxer Saira Tabasum, and it was beautiful to see the mapping of these young girls thoughts matched with such a riot of movement...body and mind united.


No Guts, No Heart, No Glory from Common Wealth on Vimeo.

Sheila Hicks

sheilahicks.com