A Moment of Beauty

I've been inspired by a visit to another blog, "...follow the yellow brick road", winner of Best New Blog at the Manchester Blog Awards on Wednesday night. I'm not jealous, not in the least and not sulking at all for not being nominated for anything - there are after all far more deserving and worthwhile blogs than my random dèrives around an eclectic range of topics. The author describes a charming little family of sparrows in the waiting room at Manchester Airport, and the fact that only she seemed to be aware of them. The little fluffbundles couldn't even charm a few crumbs from a man with a danish.

I've found that Nature often provides little encounters with beauty that seem to be there just for you.

It's often like that - a glance up at the sky last weekend showed me and my children a beautiful rainbow effect in high altitude ice crystals. No-one else ever looks up in cities, I've noticed that on quite a few walks around Manchester with the Loiterers' Resistance Movement - we've been looking at interesting things about Manchester's skyline and the occult significance of twiddly little bits of architecture and had people giving us odd looks for daring to raise our eyes above street level. I think my children and I were the only people to appreciate that little moment of beauty. (The picture's from beloblog, by the way - not mine. Google images is brilliant!)


Later that morning, we saw a rainbow effect on the floor as low sunlight hit the edge of a glass shop door and spilled all its component colours out on the pavement in front of us in an otherwide dull and dreary alleyway. No-one else appeared to have noticed. It was an "Oh wow" moment just for us. I thought someone else must have seen it, given the number of people who habitually shuffle along, gaze locked on the floor about three feet in front of them. However, it was just a narrow band of coloured light only a few feet away from the invisible busker. (Neil Gaiman is right, by the way - it is dangerous to notice such people, and often only those who live on the Edges themselves do so.) That little ray of light provided us with both an impromptu science lesson and another bright moment of beauty on a cold and windy day.

Lost in Dance

I have taken the plunge.

I'm about to do something that I've been psyching myself up for for the last year or two - pretty much since my first Hafla.

I'm doing my first ever solo bellydance performance next month at our class' Performance Platform.

I haven't yet decided on my music, but it's likely to be Persephone, Queen of the Underworld by Unto Ashes or something by Maduro - or even have a stab at Evil Night Together by Jill Tracy (as done by the eminently fabulous Tempest. I want to do something a bit darker & more Gothic than is usually chosen by the folks in my classes. I do a fab routine to a Nine Inch Nails track (Closer), but that might have some of the older members of the audience reaching for their smelling salts - it's so very different to the Egyptian poppy stuff we dance to in class!

I've been inspired by a recent Tribal workshop I did with Chris Ogden in Leeds (where I finally got to meet one of my Faceboook/Myspace friends, Nerissa/Yorkshire Rose). I also want to prepare for the Bellydance Weekend I'm going on next Spring, where I'll be expected to perform, so getting some prior experience would be useful!

All of my MySpace and Facebook dancer friends, as well as the ladies from my class have been immensely supportive and encouraging, so I'm going to do it.

More details coming soon.