My Body is My Temple

The first time I heard someone say, 'No, I won't eat [that], my body is my temple,' it was the 70s and I was about 10 years old. I was struck by the comment, but had no idea what it meant.

Now, I think I’m starting to get it. A temple is where we worship, where we go to find peace and solace, to seek the experience of God however we define that.

I have often gotten caught up, instead, in worshipping the temple.

But lately I’ve come to understand that when I think, My body is my temple, this is not vanity.

My body is my temple in so much as it needs to be a peaceful place through which I can experience the divine. To be peaceful that way, this body needs 9 hours sleep, meditation, good food, lots of walking etc., and also the company of friends, the joy and sorrow of love, the experience of wilderness and all forms of beauty, perceived and expressed.

Seeing myself this way changes the way I look at others too. When I really get into it, I no longer see young or old, slender or fat, distinctions that are all about status and worldly power, anyway.

When I really experience my body as a temple, I get to see everyone else’s body as a temple too. And then, well, I have a really nice day.

I hope you have a nice day too.

... and a chipmunk in a pear tree

From outside my window, something sweet for you as the holiday weekend draws to a close.

come see the water fall

There is a fairy goddess creature on the East River of Manhattan. She stands so tall, facing north, and you cannot really see her face. But if you approach her from the south, especially at night, you will see her ever-flowing white hair pouring off her shoulders. Or you might think someone had opened a zipper in the night sky and let the heavenly waters pour out.

I am not making this up. Well, maybe the part about the zipper and the fairy, but not the part about the water, and the 100 foot fall from the sky. If you don't believe me click here.

New York City has been graced with the work of Olafur Eliasson and his vision of four waterfalls around the East River and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

I love and cherish the interest of artists from around the world to grace my home town with their wild ideas, and I am so grateful that this city is a place for wild ideas to flourish and be realized.


Most of all, visiting the falls last night, especially as darkness set and rendered the scaffolding invisible, while the light on the falling water made them glow, I experienced a very adult and childlike sense of magic and wonder, one where my intellectual understanding of what I saw in no way interfered with the near mystical awe.


Thank you Olafur, thank you New York City, thank you Public Art Fund.


And you who read this, come and see for yourselves. The falls will be there through mid-October. And try to be good: resist the urge to climb the scaffolding and ride the cool white wave...

on a lighter note

Paul and I went recently to MoMA. They've moved some paintings since I was last there; I missed seeing Klimt's Forest but delighted in the Pollack room where my eyes feasted a long while. (above, detail from "Full Fathom Five")

Is it odd or fitting that it was in this museum of visual art that I discovered how easily the world can be deprived of color?

One hallway, on the third floor I believe, was drenched in yellow light. All other colors vanished. I tried to remember how colors work... Ah yes, blue lets in all the colors except blue which it reflects back. So what if there is no blue in the light? In this case, everything -- faces, clothing, hands -- was in gray scale of yellow to black. No orange, red, pinks, purple, blue, green or white. It was awful.

If I were ever captured and jailed in some distopian future, that would possibly be the worse punishment. I did not know this was possible without prior injury to my eyes or somesuch.

It surely made me hunger for color immediately -- Paul and I raced through the long pool of yellow light to the other side of the corridor where colors returned.

I need all my colors. The deep purples and the soft greens and sunny oranges. They feed my eyes and my soul. Sometimes I envy the birds' and the bees' ability to see even more colors than I do. Not one color less will do, no, not even one less.

Yesterday's Post, last month's news

I don't often read the newspaper, so I found out from some friends on Monday that the Bodies Exhibit has been forced by the NY Attorney General to post the following disclaimer at its NYC exhibit entrance and website:

Disclaimer: This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

This exhibit displays full body cadavers as well as human body parts, organs, fetuses and embryos that come from cadavers of Chinese citizens or residents. With respect to the human parts, organs, fetuses and embryos you are viewing, Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

Worse, yes it gets worse: in China, the families of executed prisoners, when they are even notified of the death at all, have a choice: pay for the room and board of the prisoner’s incarceration, including the bullet used for execution, or receive a large sum of money for the body parts.

I am horrified that people can know this and still pay almost $30 to see the exhibit. I am horrified that the exhibitors know this and still collect the money instead of immediately closing the shows, which are all over the world.

That is what yesterday's post is about. Like I said it is not pretty, but perhaps sometimes outrage can be a form a beauty? What do you think?

This one will not be pretty

Six cents for the bullet to the back of the head

Of your man

Whom you have not seen in months

Who was taken from your bed in the middle of the night

For a crime that he may or may not have committed,

A crime that may or may not be a crime.



Six cents on top of the room and board

For which you will have to pay

The room being his tiny prison cell

The food being maggotty rice

A bill for things you never wanted.

A bill that is more than you can afford,

and already the children's bellies growl.



Ah! but they offer you a way out: let us sell his body for parts

Sell his body, he's dead now, what difference does it make.

Better yet, we'll pay for everything, we'll even give you money

Lots of money

and we won't even charge you the six cents.



This could be a great honor! He may go from

being a bad criminal to saving lives!

A kidney for a poor young mother whose children need her.



Who knows, he could become famous, yes famous in America!

Altantic City, Las Vegas, New York City.

World famous: Budapest, Madrid, Vienna

Smart people will move his body into a shape -- so clever!

Looks like he's playing soccer! Patty cakes!

Dancing a happy dance!

Good for science. Good for education.

Many people will pay big money to see him! More than you make in a week!

Many fancy people will line up to see him, without his skin, looking like he's playing soccer.


So clever.


So much better than you paying six cents for the bullet we put in his head.

Don't worry over him so much. Did you really like him so much?

How can you like an enemy of the state? What are your political affiliations?

Where were you last week at 9 p.m.?

Faith on a wing

I found a dragonfly wing this morning. It caught the light just right on my path or I would never have seen it, transparent miracle that it is.

This photo (found online) doesn't show the wing's rainbow irridescence when tilted toward the sun. But it captures exactly the wing's awe-inspiring intricacy.

I am brought to think of a quote from the New Testament Gospels, Matt 6:28-30 28, "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

For those of you who don't know me well, I could not be confused with a Christian, but I have faith -- sometimes large, sometimes little -- and I dip my bucket in many wells.

Sometimes I find a well in texts, scripture and otherwise. Sometimes I find one even deeper, in the impossibly fragile construct of a dragonfly wing.

Where do you dip your bucket?