Wild, Part 1

I can’t help but chuckle to myself when thinking about a remark I heard in the fall … 

A friend of a good friend (but not someone I know well) has kept in touch with me via “email-log.” 

Before I started this blog, I would send an “email letter” or “entry” to a mailing list, which was on bcc (blind carbon copy) basis. This would sometimes lead to “daemon-mailer” messages, in response, from messages that got lost in the electronic frontier. These are an annoyance of grand proportion when you are traveling by train through Europe. It was also cumbersome to send pictures at times, if I hadn’t been uploading diligently. 

The blog is the replacement of that. It means that anyone can read the posts who has the link, or who knows what to look for.

This person was on my email-list when it existed. We’ve corresponded about the overlap between spirituality and the arts, specifically music. We don’t write to each other often, but I savor the letters when I get them. They are always beautifully written. He has gotten to know me, remotely, over a number of years, and as probably (as he thinks of it) as somewhat of a “wild woman.” There are bits of truth to that. 

I would say that anyone in the arts these days must have a little “wild” in them. Why else would we want to listen to them? 

Let’s define wild, especially as it applies to the arts.

1. (of an animal or plant) living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated.

2. uncontrolled or unrestrained, especially in pursuit of pleasure.

3. very enthusiastic or excited.

4. a wild card, or something that is unknown that, when introduced, changes the game.

If artists-creators-writers-musicians-actors-directors cannot tap into some or all of the above qualities, they aren’t worth spending any time on.

The remark that was relayed to me was,

“I don’t believe she got married.”

And my response was - 

“Really?” 

Does marriage diminish wildness? Is it such an institution that people can’t retain some original core of who they are? Or is the very decision to get married seen as a surrender to once-wild images? When Zheng and I announced our engagement, numerous remarks reached me such as, “I hope she doesn’t stop traveling!” or “I hope she doesn’t loose her ambition!” 

My response to both of these is - 

“Really?” 

(To be continued ...)

PHOTO: From our wedding rehearsal! Zheng's mother had come from China to visit us and to attend our wedding. She designed and made the clothes that we are wearing. 

Walking the streets on a snowy morning

I love snow. I have always loved it as a kid. I love its ability to quiet the world. It brings reverence to an irreverent world. People move a little slower, avoiding virginal white patches that are yet untrodden. Yet, we only have one word for it. 

Rounding the bend of my fourth winter in the "Great White North," I'm not sick of the winters yet. Zheng is still fascinated by them, because his first American snow was with me. I have a good mind to purchase a couple-sled or some kind of small tobbagan. 

In walking to one of my Syracuse "holy of holies," Cafe Kubal, I was properly bundled for the cold. Including my "eskimo" hooded, long, down-insulated camel-colored winter coat. It's warm. It matches my skin tone (and my boots) and it has been with me throuugh terrible weather in Ann Arbor, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, Washington, DC, Beijing, and Shanghai. I will wear this coat until it is really time to retire it (I think it is with me for the long haul.).

Yet, I saw two people on my walk here that made *that* face, tthe face that says, "Oh my god, look at her hood!!"

Whatever. I'll let you be the judge. Maybe, like the article I've pasted below, we should have different words for "cold" and "warm." 

For now, I am having espresso, watching the flakes fall. And enjoying what's left of a quiet morning before six hours of rehearsal today. All photos are from my phone, and not filtered or altered in any way. -- KDY

This is from David Robson's article in the Washington Post:

"Anthropologist Franz Boas didn’t mean to spark a century-long argument. Traveling through the icy wastes of Baffin Island in northern Canada during the 1880s, Boas simply wanted to study the life of the local Inuit people, joining their sleigh rides, trading caribou skins and learning their folklore. As he wrote proudly to his fiancee, “I am now truly like an Eskimo. . . . I scarcely eat any European foodstuffs any longer but am living entirely on seal meat.” He was particularly intrigued by their language, noting the elaborate terms used to describe the frozen landscape: “aqilokoq” for “softly falling snow” and “piegnartoq” for “the snow [that is] good for driving sled,” to name just two."