Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

  • A deal with yourself

    My longtime friend and artist Stephanie Barrow spent last year making videos about making art. She made a commitment to herself to do it and she followed through. I love that. Today she posted a video about what she learned from a year of meeting that personal commitment. Besides the window into her vibrant art that this video provides, I also liked learning about the evolution in her thinking regarding the value of making these art videos.

    The video in the above link is about five minutes. If you don’t have five minutes to burn, click on the link below to her website, and enjoy her smiling face. It’ll brighten your day. And maybe her current charity challenge listed there will inspire you to make a deal with yourself, a personal challenge of some kind. Doesn’t have to be a yearlong thing. Could be a month. Could be a week. Just a thing that’s all your own.

    https://www.vandoodleart.com/

  • In praise of daydreaming

    …or why I love the beach.

    1. Watching the endless variety and shape of crashing waves.
    2. Pondering how the ocean hurls massive tree trunks well beyond the highwater mark.
    3. Discovering the strange gray rock shot through with thin white in the shape of a heart.
    4. Oh, wait is that a whale spouting?
    5. Finding just the right spot to doze in the rare January sun.
    6. Wondering if the water touching Oregon also touched Japan.
    7. Discovering the perfect sand dollar.
    8. Considering how the dunes have changed in the last 40 years.
    9. Thinking how everything dances, trees in the wind, sanderlings scuttling ahead of the water, the seaweed tossing and waving, pelicans rising and diving, dogs free and prancing.
    10. Wondering if it’s water that makes sand out of rocks.

  • The dragon surveys January

    Nia trainer dancing in black and white with red belt and dancers in black.
    Nia trainer Britta von Tagen dancing “Dragon”

    I had the pleasure of dancing last summer with Nia instructor Britta von Tagen. She co-taught a white belt training in Pleasant Hill with Kellie Chambers and dropped in to the Just Move Studio for some community dance sessions. Her energy, precision and a kind of fierceness were exciting and maybe a tad scary for me.

    But in overcoming the lethargy of January, I wanted some of that von Tagen energy. I got it in spades dancing with the online version of “Dragon” for the first time. This routine toggles between subtlety of movement and controlled power. I love how the narrative that accompanies the music and the movement brings a mental shift. The story in the dance engages the imagination. Suddenly there’s a beast in the room, and it’s me…emerging dragon.

    As I was dancing, I flashed on “Ted Lasso” actress Hannah Waddingham, who plays a soccer club owner in the UK, a lone woman in an industry dominated by men. There’s a scene where she describes psyching herself up for meetings where she’ll be the only woman. Do watch it if you haven’t seen it — one minute and 25 seconds of video that I feel deeply no matter how many times I click on it.

    That’s what dancing “Dragon” made me feel like. When I woke up the next day, I wanted to do it all over again. So I did.