someone who loved this poem

showed me this poem and now i love it too. and this is also because i ate a slice of pizza with the man and shook his hand and left grinning ear to ear. (and it won't let me post it with the line breaks as they should be but...)

"Cherry Blossoms Blowing In Wet, Blowing Snow"
by James Galvin

In all the farewells in all the airports in all the profane dawns.

In the Fiat with no documents on the road to Madrid.
At the
corrida.
In the Lope de Vega, the Analena, the Jerome.
In time
past, time lost, time yet to pass.
In poetry.
In watery deserts, on
arid seas, between deserts and seas.
In sickness and in health.
In
pain and in the celebration of pain.
In the delivery room.
In the
garden.
In the hammock under the aspen.
In all the emergencies.
In
the waterfall.
In toleration.
In retaliation.
In rhyme.
Among cherry
blossoms blowing in wet, blowing snow, weren't we something?

Glass Dandelions

I went home with Andrew for the long weekend to Scranton, PA ("home" of the office!). These pieces from a local artist (Jenn Bell) were up in his mother's kitchen.




They're made of glass laid on a copper plate. The figures are made from copper wire.

Be Still My Heart

No, I am not in love with Evgeny Kissin, the performer in this video (although that last name should factor in just a little, no?), but I am in love with Frederic Chopin. He has been one of my favorite composers for many years and this piece, his Fantasie Impromptu Opus 66, has held the number one spot on my list of favorite piano pieces for some time now. Like so much good art, whether it's Virginia Woolf's The Waves or Rothko's Orange and Tan, I think the best way to enjoy this is to just let it wash over you. (Go ahead and skip ahead to 1:30 on the video, unless you like listening to Germans speak German--I know I do.)



And, in case you're interested, here's a link to the sheet music.

until kingdom come

this is a song that gets my heart going. it makes me want to run for hours or just hug someone really tight. it was what i wanted my last song in DC to be (ended up being "country roads" which seemed entirely appropriate). and i love listening to it when driving late at night.

Camille Saint-Saens

It feels a bit like fall tonight--crisp air, falling leaves, lovely breezes--and the onset of fall always makes me want Saint-Saens. So I found this:

And I cannot stop watching the lovely miracle of Maya Plisetskaya's dancing.

I want to see this movie... and maybe its because work is rough today

Afterwards

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things"?

-Thomas Hardy

Squeak Carnwath is one of my favorite painters

lovely treasure

this song is perfection.

beirut sunday

i want more than anything to live one of these old clips. bless you, beirut.


"Postcards from Italy"

And I will love to see that day
That day is mine
When she will marry me outside with the willow trees
And play the songs we made
They made me so
And I would love to see that day
Her day was mine

Dream a Little Dream of Me

I've been dancing around the house to this song all morning. And Ella, oh she does the song justice

LLAMADA INESPERADA

Es un soplido
Coincidencias hacen la realidad propia
avisos, anuncios, advertencias, piquetes,
un campo de fut, campo de golf, fosa comun

Es un instante
las galaxias platican sobre ellas de
cómo trabaja nuestro cerebro
se preguntan el por què nos cuestionamos

Es más el hambre de 3 días de un niño,
lamadre que con ardor en el vientre ve a
sus niños llorar y comer tierra
Al final eso es lo que comemos
respiramos lodo y hojarasca

Pudo haber sido aquel o yo
la ruleta de la que formamos parte
esperamos estar debajo, el tiro fallido,
el tiro preciso

yo soy quien juego, la sangre se enfría
la piel se enverdece, halar el gatillo
Pensar un poco y volver a la casa,
hacer la oración de despedida del día
y prepararse para volver a estar.

ball ideal

yesterday i went to this fabulous farmer's auction and left with a lovely little box of free things. i am most proud of the three aqua ball ideal glass canning jars. they are beautiful and sit in my windowsill. tonight i watched the sunset fill the jars and spread the light all across my desk. there was something so minutely perfect about these blue jars framed by my white lace curtains and the trees just beginning to silhouette outside. one of those moments where you kind of look around in astonishment and think, good heavens, i am here and i am alive and it is wonderful.

hidden friends

i feel like i am friends with these pieces by a student named jung su-won (from another grand exhibition at seoul station). maybe this is because they make me think of a korean ash mae, maybe it's because you feel, sometimes, that you and an artist are kindred spirits even if you might never have the chance to meet in person.

Animated Poetry

I love these animated Billy Collins poems:
"Forgetfulness"

"The Dead"

WHAT THE SLACKING!??!?!

So sad. Anyway I have just arrived in Iowa and these are the things that matter: I got a free desk but it was disgusting. So I put some pretty sea foam green shelving paper on it and a nice bamboo placemat and one painting by ashmae and one illustration by lia kim. And I feel so much more at home. ashmae's painting is of a migration of birds. It is small enough that I can hold it in my hands. lia kim's says this:

"(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses. nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands)"

-e.e. cummings

thank you. i am so glad to have such friends. 

The Activist's Love Poem

Don’t Ask Me for That Love Again

That which then was ours, my love,
don't ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light --
and only because of you. That's what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumors of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, wherever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If You'd fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.

All this I'd thought, all this I'd believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can't help but look back
when I return from those alleys --what should one do?
And you still are so ravishing --what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Yes somedays you need some Michael Sowa

Sacraments

I've been thinking, reading, and writing a great deal about sacraments lately, the idea of consecrating even ordinary things and moments and relationships, making them holy. In the process, I came across this in the OED (emphasis added):

"d. sacrament of the present moment, any and every moment regarded as an opportunity for the reception of divine grace. 1921 E. J. STRICKLAND tr. de Caussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence I. i. 3 What treasures of grace lie concealed in these moments filled, apparently, by the most ordinary events... O Bread of Angels! heavenly manna!.. Sacrament of the present moment! 1930 J. CHAPMAN Spiritual Lett. (1935) 83 The whole point of the 'Sacrament of the present moment' is that it is a..sacrament; it is God's action, God's will. 1943 O. WYON School of Prayer iii. 38 God makes His will known to us through the things that happen every day... Once we see it, our whole life is lifted on to a higher plane. This way of living has been described as The Sacrament of the Present Moment. 1967 J. N. WARD Use of Praying iii. 36 There is the use of the 'Jesus Prayer'... There is the cultivation of the 'sacrament of the present moment'. 1979 Tablet 22/29 Dec. 1251/2 We miss the many-splendoured thing in the goings-on of daily life, but it is there, totally transforming it and bestowing the sacrament of the present moment on those who are willing to accept it."

Diebenkorn swoonings

i went to the phillips primarily to see the diebenkorn in new mexico show. and while i was not entirely in love with some of the paintings in this series there were two that delivered a well-placed and much needed punch to the gut (both Untitled and painted in 1950):



i could not stop staring at the first painting. there is something so elusive to it, maybe all the negative space...i'm not sure but man. oh. man. i love his economy of strokes in the second one-so incredibly evocative. i want my essays and poems to be able to do that...

here are two quotes from the show that have got me thinking:

"The artwork is less like a noun and more like a verb…"
-Martin Facey

"Fast and slow come together in his work...the 'ineptitudes' or 'awkwardness' are retained...in order to avoid the slick and ingratiating. It is a redirection to avoid getting easy. Diebenkorn retains this stumbling."
-Wayne Thiebaud

display as art

i went to the old seoul train station yeseterday to see its annual exhibit of international student art. the pieces were incredible, and everywhere, as they were nearly pouring off the many walls and coridors and passageways. but the building itself was a veritable fantasyland of peeling wallpaper and dilapidated walls and spiraling wires and imaginative history.
i got carried away and began snapping photos religiously.

yucca

of all the magical things that happened this weekend (and yes that includes traipsing about annapolis in bedazzled sailor hats with "AHOY!" scrawled across them in puffy glitter paint) there is one image that i dearly wanted to post on this blog. it is photograph by brett weston from his exhibit at the phillips collection. and it's of yucca plants. but they seem to be floating. and from afar i didn't even realize it was a photograph--i thought it was an obscure painting he did (and i thought it odd that a painting should be the frontispiece of a photography exhibit). i love the way he looks at the world, how simple yucca plants can become an experiment in abstraction, or the curve of a rear view mirror can resemble, in unbelievable ways, the curve of kelp stranded on a beach. the depth of his black and white--good grief, i fell into his photos over and over again. 

so without further ado:

also, sitting in a small, quiet room with shaded windows and surrounded by rothko paintings has got to be one of the most amazing things in the world. i felt almost capsized with the beauty and sadness of the colors, the immensity of the canvases and the thudding of my heart.

little floating spaces

these lovely creations by yoo hyung taick challenge notions of home and space by repasting them into a vibrant floating mass of dreamspace. i went crazy trying to take forbidden photographs until i finally gave in to the gallery guide's dirty looks and laid down the money for a catalogue.


(if i might just indulge myself with a shout of glee, let me exclaim: look at this. just LOOK at it!)

here are two reasons why going to summer school was worth it.

Marc Chagall, Birthday
Juan Miro, Birth of the World

writer crush: italo calvino

From Invisible Cities:

"The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there; and he retraced the stages of his journeys, and he came to know the port from which he had set sail, and the familiar places of his youth, and the surroundings of home, and a little square of Venice where he gambled as a child...

The traveler's past changes according to the route he has follows...Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."

with so many of us traveling, about to travel, or longing to travel, this seemed so appropriate. i love, love, love the idea of renewing the past in this way.


image "based on invisible cities": ana vicente

100th POST!!!! (we are awesome guys!)

i forgot just how much i love fidalis buehler's paintings. remember this larger than life amzing-ness that graced gallery 110's wall?


and this?

here's fidalis on his art: "My work exposes the duality of skill and awkwardness; generating tension between craftsmanship and brutality. The psychology of the brush strokes and the indecency of the execution activates feelings of disconnect, fragility, sacredness, and uncertainty; fusing memory and conscious thought to arrive at a peculiar but honest visual interpretation."

view more here.

But now, shall I confess a truth?

"New Year's Eve" by Charles Lamb is one of my favorite essays. In it, Lamb's contemplation over the significance of New Year's Eve takes him through the subjects of birth, love, death, and lots of things in between. If you want to read the whole thing--and I think you should--you can find the text here in its entirety. The part of the essay I want to share with you all is somewhere in the middle of the essay, right after Lamb wonders at the link between the sound of midnight chimes and a strange awareness of his own mortality. And then, this:

"But now, shall I confess a truth?—I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser’s farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away “like a weaver’s shuttle.” Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave.—Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself—do these things go out with life?"

Amen.

years later and still madly in love with him

i first read this when i was homesick in london and it was raining. reading this made me forget all of that--it is beautiful. it's from jonathan safran foer's "About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition" and it is brilliant. if you get a chance, read the whole thing. it will make you feel like you are soaring.

REAL TIME, REAL WORLD, TO SCALE: This typeface began organically, with the popularisation of e-mail. Such symbols as :) came to stand for those things that words couldn't quite get at. Over time, every idea had a corresponding symbol, not unlike the drawings from the dark caves of early man. These symbols approximated what a word described better than a word ever could. (A picture of a flower is closer to the flower it describes than flower is.)

The evolution continued. The typographical symbol for flower became a sketch of a flower, then an oil painting of a flower, then a photograph of a flower, then a sculpted flower, then a video of a flower, and is, now, a real-time real-world flower. Henry exists: he blinks, he inhales, he tells his older brother, I love you more now than I did before, he stammers, he sways, he begs, Sophy, believe in me, always.

This typeface was not used because of the fear that it would be popularised, that all books would be printed in real-time real-world, making it impossible to know whether we were living as autonomous beings, or characters in a story. When you read these words, for example, you would have to wonder whether you were the real-time real-world incarnation of someone in a story who was reading these words. You would wonder if you were not the you that you thought you were, if you were about to finish this book only because you were written to do so, because you had to.

Or perhaps, you think, it's otherwise. You approach this final sentence because you are you, your own you, living a life of your own creation. If you are a character, then you are the author. If you are a slave to your own weaknesses, then you are unconstrained. Perhaps you are completely free.

Before the Battle Began

Today I did an interview at Radio Free Asia which secretly broadcasts news inside Burma. From what I've heard, about a third of the nation listens to these broadcasts, often with many people huddled around an old broken radio. My friend Zaw Kyaw interviewed me about the Global Day of Action on 8.8.08 - and this might be one of the favorite parts of my job - directly speaking to the people of Burma that they are not alone, that there are many people fighting for their freedom.

I'm helping this same friend prepare for the TOEFL exam, and he gave me this story he wrote about his hometown in Burma so that I can help him with his grammar. The story is incredibly beautiful I find, and it's even more heart-wrenching because I contrast the peace in the story with knowing that after this he participated in the 1988 revolution, that he fought in the jungle for 13 years as a member of the guerilla student army, then 5 times being arrested in Thailand and on and on the struggle.

Here are a few portions from his story. I think in his head he was writing a straight out description of the town, but to me its quite poetic, and I guess the memory of the long ago peace that may never be reached again brings out quite the poetic and tragic memory.

"The town started the day with the sound of horse’s step. I always hear from my bed and it was so miserable especially in winter. I was wrapped up in a blanket and I always thought they might be very cold. I knew that it was also dark. The horses brought loaded carts , full with goods and people to the market. Mostly these people were local sellers. There were just a few old American-made cars in town. I didn’t know why these people needed to wake up very early morning and work very hard. Also I did not realize people were poor, including me when I was young.

It rains in May, June and July. During this time, people standing under the shelter or walking or biking in the rain is a normal picture. Children play football in the street under the heavy rain is a habit. Sometimes three four days long rain made water field (rephrase this). The Irrawaddy river comes up into the town in the raining season. Northern and Western part of the town is flooded. Northern people were up set but southerners were happy with rowing boats.

In the winter, people make fires in the yard and sticky rice for breakfast. The snow is not white there. It is violet. It is actually humid. But it is snow for us. It become a water drop and hang at a leave then fall on to the another leave. It become sound of early winter morning. Children wake up in the cold and sit at window then read there lesson with voice and memorized all of their notes. It is also sound of morning.

The market finished at half day and people cook at home and eat with their family. There are Mohinkha, Tofu, and rice salad shops everywhere in the town. They pack the food with a large green leaf from a tree. The warm food was small with a fresh green leaf.
They are still working, walking, eating, sleeping, talking, crying, laughing and the town is still going."

Drawing: Cause and Solution to All of Life’s Problems

this is motivating advice (and a lovely image!) for all of us from amy wilson, a professor of fine art at sva:




I started off this morning with my favorite little art trick ever, one that I’ve used ever since I was a teenager. In the weird little twilight that exists between being awake and asleep – that lull that comes over you just as you start to be aware of your surroundings upon waking up – I planted an idea in my head and just let my mind take it over and fester on it.

I think if I were to put in a nutshell what all my greatest problems in life were, that nutshell would be neatly labeled “fear” – I can actually do quite a number of interesting things reasonably well, it’s just that sometimes fear overtakes me and it causes me to screw up. Sometimes I go to say a particular word – and it could be truly anything, like a friend’s name that I’ve said a thousand times before – and suddenly get this panic that I’m going to pronounce it wrong… and in the split second between thinking the name and saying the name, this fear takes over. And then, of course, because I’ve become so distracted and fixated on saying it wrong, I do in fact mispronounce it. It’s frustrating. It’s not that I can’t say it correctly or that I haven’t said it correctly many times before. It’s just that the fear takes over and… well, that is the end of that.

The same thing happens to me in my work – I have a problem which I know I can solve, and yet I can’t because the fear cripples me – and so this exercise is a good way to force myself to relax and just let my brain do what it already knows what to do.

Because it's summer and because we love this poem

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

Celebration of Friendship/1

On the outskirts of Havana, they call friends mi terre, my country, or mi sangre, my blood.
In Caracas, a friend is mi pana, my bread, or mi llave, my key: pana from panaderia, bakery, the source of wholesome bread to sate the hunger of the soul; llave, from...
"Key, from key," Mario Benedetti tells me.
And he tells how, when he lived in Buenos Aires in times of terror, he would carry five alternate keys on his key ring: the keys to five houses, to five friends: the keys that proves his salvation.

-Eduardo Galeano

(thank you for being my keys!)

one of my all time favorite artists

because the things she makes and writes are brave, poetic, intelligent, and lovely. they are things you want to wear as delicate pendants around your neck, keep pinned inside your jacket, or piece into a warm winter quilt. thank you, ashley mae, for your creativity and passion (and, of course, your friendship).

when something wonderful has touched us

i want to understand what magic is.
i want to understand what it is that hits us and pulls at us and opens our hearts and "makes our minds and hearts beat more in sync" (a little quote from a long-ago e-mail from narwhal).
i want to understand how we can capture it and breathe it into our bodies and let it flow through our veins, trapped in little molecules of oxygen until it enters our cells and infuses our membranes and becomes us.
i want to know how we can wake up every day and be giddy for no reason, simply because of a once-upon-a-time when we held our breaths to stop time.


I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

as with a match
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,

but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.

The geese
flew on.
I have never
seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.


from Snow Geese by Mary Oliver

Which Reminds Me

of this.

Riff Off of The Age of Silence

During my lunch break just now, I read Marquez. I'm less than 100 pages away from finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude and the deeper I've sunk into this book, the more haunting the language and images have become. And after Amy's quick allusion to Marquez in a post about gestures and love, I thought it fitting to include the following passage, which made me cry in the middle of Au Bon Pain half an hour ago:

Aureliano Segundo thought without saying so that the evil was not in the world but in some hidden place in the mysterious heart of Petra Cotes, where something had happened during the deluge that had turned the animals sterile and made money scarce. Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.

a little lifescape

"As for me I don't want to judge the people. I am always observing my immediate surroundings. This work focuses on the presence of human beings in the cityscape. However, there must be the awareness of the space where I am confronted with the specific cityscapes. The character portrayed in each location seems to be with these environments, appearing isolated."
- Sunghee Lee

The Age of Silence

This excerpt is from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, pages 72-74. There are many times in my life where I found myself falling head over heels in love with words and writing. Reading this book made me do so over and over again. (This part also reminds me of Marquez, and what could be a mistake about that?)

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still...No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life....

Aside from one exception, almost no record exists of this first language. This exception, on which all knowledge of the subject is based, is a collection of seventy-nine fossil gestures, prints of human hands frozen in midsentence and housed in a small museum in Buenos Aires. One holds the gesture for Sometimes when the rain, another for After all these years, another for Was I wrong to love you? They were found in Morocco in 1903 by an Argentine doctor named Antonia Alberto de Biedma. He was hiking in the High Atlas Mountains when he discovered the cave where the seventy-nine gestures were pressed into the shale. He studied them for years without getting any closer to understanding, until one day, already suffering the fever of the dysentery that would kill him, he suddenly found himself able to decipher the meanings of the delicate motions of fists and fingers trapped in stone. Soon afterwards he was taken to a hospital in Fez, and as he lay dying his hands moved like birds forming a thousand gestures, dormant all those years.

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms--if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body--it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. It's not that we've forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: all artifacts of ancient gestures. Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it's too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other's bodies to make ourselves understood.

I think Rodin knew this too: