Teachers can be anyone, and can be identified as such based on the timely moment when they enter our lives.
Teachers do not have to be people that we learn from on a shared physical plane, standing before us, breathing their speak into the same space that we inhabit....but to say truly that there is anything else like that type of interaction; existing together and exchanging reverberations, the real-time call and responsiveness, the intersecting and melding of musings, would do a great injustice to the preciousness of such an opportunity. I have been lucky enough to have a handful of such teachers, all which opened my mind little by little and urged me to peak around corners that maybe seemed too dark, or that I had passed by over and over without noticing that they were there at all.
One of my most significant teachers, artist Joanna Frueh, came into my life at such an opportune moment in 2006 or 7 when I took part in her performance art class in college. To explain the details surrounding her impact and timeliness in my life at that point would not serve to illuminate anything particularly interesting here, but suffice to say that upon leaving that class I never felt freer or more clear of my own power and thirst for a sensuous and magical life than I did at that point.
Sometimes it is sufficient for those teachers to incite change and inspiration and then remain as a grand statue in our past - flickers of memory and nostalgia may bring them back to mind and appreciation of their role in our creative unfurling may linger on - either as a conscious thought or in the evidence of the new paths we've blazed & tended. Other times, teachers return, just at the winds shift and we find ourselves again in a graduated replica of that original mind/spirit moment of need...
Such is the case of my dear teacher, Joanna. As I grapple with the absolute celestial knowledge and recognition of the things that are lacking from my current life, I happened to stumble across an email about the release of her new book, A Short Story about Big Healing. This serendipitous discovery lead me to explore the richness of her words, photographs, and art contained on her sweetly simple website.... a still eye in the tornado of overstimuli which is the internet and social media. Existing. Beautifully. As always. As herself.
As I lingered over her words, delicate as a field of poppy and just as resilient and prolific, the exact thoughts and affirmations that had been hiding themselves in resented and self inflicted responsibility - on the tip of my tongue until now, were once again made obvious. I effortlessly imagined those words delivered in the deep rich tones of Joanna's sturdy voice, as if from a smooth grooved record where the needle had just dropped onto the exactly right place.
An exert from Joanna Frueh's web-published piece, A Work in Progress.
"Beauty, economy, and necessity
Beauty, economy, and necessity are foundational pleasures for me. These days they spontaneously apply themselves in writing and performing as they do in eating, cooking, moving my body, connecting with people, choosing and arranging the material elements that create my home, buying and wearing clothes, picking a book, an aesthetician, acupuncturist, yoga studio, or travel destination, be it the Missouri Ozarks or Tamil Nadu.
Beauty is a cultivation of self and surroundings through feeling the subtleties of each.
Economy means attentive management rather than sparing use or scarcity.
Necessity ensures, to the best of my ability, that shoulds and have-tos dissolve before they lead to wasted energy, time, and words, and such selectivity and discrimination unfix ways that I've written and performed, so that my own flexibility surprises me, letting ideas and texts reshape themselves, freeing myself from forms and processes of writing and performing that have become routine and redundant to me."
http://joannafrueh.com/
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