Heaven & Earth

“The body – our own – is now base” as Charles Olson famously put it. The body is base (noun and adjective) and the body is the place, the place we are, the place we come back to, otherwise we lose touch – we lose Earth. The body is of the Earth. And it holds the heart – is hearth to heart. Heart is of the heavens. When full of heart we fly, or at least float. Lightness in Tai Chi is heart. Joy is heart. A full singing heart feels as though it can achieve anything, and it can, as long as when it sings the body keeps hold of the Earth. Balance in life is managing these two tropisms – the urano- and the geo-, working with both all of the time. This requires maturity and a sense of humour. Maturity is having enough life experience not to be frightened. A sense of humour is the ability to reconcile conflict with laughter.

The Olson quote comes from volume 10 of the Journal of the Charles Olson Archive: The Chiasma. If you'd like to wrestle with Olson's prose, a labour of love I found enormously rewarding 25 years ago, then the book can be downloaded as 5 pdfs: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. Browser pdf plugins often malfunction so I suggest right-clicking these links and saving rather than left-clicking.