Purpose

I came home from work early yesterday and got onto my couch hours and hours before the new dark.  I read, ate some grocery store sushi, and then turned on t.v.  I watched "Memoirs of a Geisha."  I'd never seen it before.  I vaguely remember not wanting to see it when it came out because it was a movie made from a best selling book.  Vaguely.  But it was beautiful and long, exactly what I needed.  The textures, the colors. . . things lost.

Japan had geishas, Europe courtesans.  All gone.  It took too much discipline, too much learning, too much investment of time.  It was a way of being, living as art.

I felt ashamed at the schmaltzy end of the movie (which I was glad of) for letting my life become such a disheveled mass of thoughtless movements and artless acts.  That wasn't the case long ago when I studied what it meant to live, when I thought about every word and gesture.  Perhaps that is all for the young and too tedious for the aged.  But I will try to pay more attention to the way I do things today, the way I walk and breathe and move. . . life embodied in a gesture. . . .