Today, Susan Ahlbrand challenged writers to use a snapshot to inspire a poem. I knew immediately which picture I would choose. Here, a young boy with Down’s Syndrome dances in Covent Garden, London as big as life all around him, in a state of blessed oblivion. I took this picture in June 2019 and it has had a lasting impact on me. Rainer Maria Rilke said, “To allow every impression and germ of a feeling to grow to completion wholly in yourself, in the darkness, in the unutterable, unconscious, inaccessible to your own understanding, and to await with deep humility and patience the hour of birth of a new clarity: that alone is what living as an artist means: in understanding as in creation
I may not live as an artist every day by Rilke’s definition, but I lived as an artist in this moment. And it still germinates in my heart - to live in the simple moments, completely swept up in the enjoyment of the music of life.....this is a lesson about living that I learned from a child on a city street, and it still echoes through time and space.
A few letters to the young poet later, Rilke wrote,”There is not more beauty (in Rome) than elsewhere.....but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.”
Go forth today and find the beauty everywhere!
He danced like no one
was watching - carefree spirit
I cried tears of joy
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