Dispatches from the middle

Day 21: Incidentally, I hate the word smorgasbord. Always have. But that’s what’s on offer today. Perhaps because I didn’t run, perhaps because I just drank a big mug of chai, there’s a lot of energy and very little order to my thoughts. Really though, isn’t that what musing and faffing is all about? And thus, a smorgasbord of beautiful things:

1. This video about the power of vulnerability:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o&feature=youtu.be

I can’t stop watching it. Dr. Brene Brown gives an amusing and inspiring talk about that most constant of challenges – how and how much to open yourself to the world around you?

2. Words on bodies. One of the last images in the video above is the words “I am enough” written across a woman’s chest. I love this! Words on bodies. There’s something about that combination that is incredibly striking – the juxtaposition of words and writing, constructed and mechanical, and often rendered in accordance with the angular dictates of a certain typeface, with the organic curves and textures of the human body. I’ve been dallying of late on websites featuring literary tattoos. While I can’t necessarily empathize with all of the choices of text, the word-body combination continues to fascinate.

3. The deliciousness of missing people.

4. Writing and receiving letters. Real letters. In Grade 9, my best friend and I passed notes constantly, as 14-year-olds are wont to do. Except these weren’t hasty scribblings tossed back and forth on scraps of paper. These were lengthy and detailed missives, often typed, pages long, or perhaps written in intricate symbolic alphabets designed specifically for the purpose. I still have the whole of our correspondence, each installment tucked away in its original envelope, or folded into some strange shape only girls in Junior High School can successfully fashion.

Now, when we find ourselves in different countries, which happens as often as not, my roommate and I write long and involved emails, exploring and debating each issue we encounter as we negotiate the trying landscape of adulthood. Even though we send them electronically, each one begins with a greeting and ends with a leave-taking; this too is a correspondence I will cherish forever.