Deeply Moved

I just watched My Architect, a documentary by Louis Kahn's son, Nathaniel Kahn. Oh my. Once in a while I see something that really lodges itself within, and moves me to a level that I can't explain with words. It had everything. It was sensitive, visually stunning, and just carried me along in it's subtle current of emotion and beauty. I want to make art. I want to travel. I want to be a wonderful daughter, wife, friend, employee and member of my family. I want things to be perfect...

It kills me how beautiful and painful life is. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with beauty I can hardly breathe. Other times I'm shocked and keenly aware of the ugliness all around me. How can something be so much of both that there is no in between?

I guess this film made me ponder the answer to that question and I came up with - you just have to dance between the two. There's a scene in the movie that sums it up for me where a young boy (presumably young Nathaniel) hops along a narrow waterway, a detail which separates some of the buildings of Kahn's Salk Biologic Institute and seems to lead off into eternity. He has one foot on each side. He hops towards the camera and then runs off along one side of the water the other direction into the unknown. Later Nathaniel as himself roller blades around and around the smooth ground surrounding the crevice, crossing back and forth, skipping over the void and between each side.

One person can't be everything. We all have our imperfections, our ugliness, our beauty. We have to claim them all. The minute we start rejecting any part of ourselves or other people we are denying life itself.