Send Off

I stole this illustration from this interview with R. Crumb in the LA Times. I am not really a huge fan of his - too misogynist for me (and I know he does it intentionally and all that but still...). Yet, I think he pretty much captures what's happening for most people.

It feels about right for me this morning as I slowly recover from the trauma of reading three poems out loud in front of about 40 people last night as part of our fall ango art practice presentation. We are assigned a topic - this time it was about sickness and medicine and how all the world is sickness and medicine, taken largely from the Vimalakirti Sutra we studied. I won't bore you with too many details, but each person presented three items from their practice - some took up visual media, other musical, movement or words.

I force myself to get up and read whatever it is that I wrote because it is so utterly horrifying. I know for a fact that I was about 10 shades of red and my hands were shaking so much I could hardly read my words. On the plus side, perhaps another person in the audience who didn't present because of feeling too shy and fearful, saw my terror and thought, look if she is doing it, maybe I can too.

Yes, that's what I will tell myself as that cringing feeling slowly fades...

This isn't really what I planned write - it just came out. What I planned to write was that the next post will be sent from beautiful, cold, grey Newfoundland. See you then!