Streaming

bSo we managed something quite lovely today after all, but not only because students came pre-pared to be spontaneous! 

Some few had brought things: some soil; a braid of sweetgrass; some sage, palo santo and a piece from one of the trees removed last month, with a shell to place under them as they were ignited with a cigarette lighter; a spell, in a tiny bottle. We huddled around these for a while - flame is irresistibly fascinating - then someone noticed some crepe streamers in yellow, red and bright green ("the colors of the maple leaves"!), and these started to wind themselves around the trees, higher and lower, some looser and and some more tautly, swooping and circling like the birds that make a home in this little forest. Sunlight and little gusts of wind came to dance with them, some streamers looping, others swinging and several vibrating with surprising agitation. 

Before we took them down again (I insisted we not leave that to someone else) we let them play on their own. The shared life of our little woods made visible, the spaces of eddying energy between the trees activated, the delight of our own movements around and among them given ephemeral form ... magic!

(But if I hadn't picked the crepe up at Party City on my way in?)

Happily we also had our now regular ritual of drawing to hand, too.