another visual record...a couple of summers ago, i visited my very dear friend's lake house in michigan. this house reminded me so much of the house in Bethany Beach, Delaware where my mom and gran and sis and i spent my childhood summers. my gran and her friend jane called it 'willow green' for the willow trees that lined the property. moving around so much, the house at bethany was a constant. i store many of my most sacred memories there - waves towering over my head and crashing directly onto the sand (seemingly), the water and sand like steal under the late days' sun, twilight on the beach (my mom's favorite time), the outdoor shower and the burnt orange bathrobe assigned to me, hours spent in the attic playing little people, leba jane's daschund, kings in the corner, being too young to sleep in the 'the tackle box' which was the big boys' bunk house, purple spandex shorts, seven brides for seven brothers, and joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coat. jane's son was a teacher, like gran and jane, and one summer, i watched - over and over again - a video of the production that he directed at the middle school where he taught. you see, a girl played joseph. i was riveted.
all of these rememberings came back to me in my friend's house, as they come back to me now. i could tell that her heart lives there. i noticed a heart shaped stone that she had on one of her end tables. she showed me a book that was the inspiration for procuring such a treasure - josie iselin's heart stones. so this post is not entirely an original idea, but when is history ever that original?
i found a heart stone, well several, on my friend's beach. i came away with arms full of stones. i then proceeded to pass along this search to my family gifting them with heart stones and iselin's book the following valentine's day. it wasn't long on this summer holiday that we began to pick them up and slip them into each others' pockets. in assisi, i came upon a patch of heart stones growing wild. and in positano, while we worshipped the sun on a rock beach, my dad turned from the mediterranean shoreline and tossed me a beautiful gray rock with white veins - "for you babe." i remember it was cool from the water but dried fast and hot in my hand.
assisi
pompei
*walking the streets and baths and agora, even the red light district, thinking about this society's legacy to ours in ways of commerce and education, how these values can be oppressive, but also how the best of these traditions have been stunted (for example, the impending loss of physical education and the arts in U.S. education)
the coliseum, rome
*indestructible?
appia antica, rome
the pantheon, rome
*marriage venue of helena and the magisterium, raphael presiding
st. ignatius, rome
the vatican
*part of Arnoldo Pomodoro's Sphere Within Sphere representing the hope for a new world emergence out of the fracturing of the old
finding these love notes in the hard folds of ruin depends on a lens of hope. my heart now breaks for what the pillars of society and justice represent right now, then, always - the worship of law over the recognition of human dignity. our president says, "we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken." i say we should be a nation of people - intelligent, embodied, sacred. for my (mostly white) friends who keep espousing the importance of respecting the justice system, let's take a minute to remember who this system serves and who it does not. zimmerman has his day in court; trayvon martin does not. will he ever?
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