Prayer flags and Walking Words

I went to Swarthmore's campus yesterday to catch the last day of the installation of Pato Hebert's work;  I realized in the morning that the exhibit was closing, and was kicking myself for not making it down earlier in the month since I wanted to revisit an Arboretum installation that was scheduled to come down at the beginning of the month.  At the end of Pato's official lecture as the Cooper Artist-in-Residence back in September, members of the audience were given Sharpies and those little flags that usually denote that some herbicide has been recently applied and is now sinking down to the water table.

On the red flags, folks were invited to respond to the prompt "I struggle when...." and on the yellow flags their their responses to the cue "I am at my best when....";  at moments like these, I am reminded of just how much I am asking of students when I do these kinds of in-class assignments since I myself usually like to present pre-polished statements to the world.  As we walked over the library for the reception, we planted our little flags in a triangular bit of groomed lawn in front of the building;  as I was walking up from the van stop, I was happy to see the small field covered with what looked like fluttering prayer flags - many more than we had first planted, which means that passers-by have been inspired to add their own thoughts.

Solipsist that I am, I went looking for my own words but didn't find them;  rather than brood over whether they had been washed away in a recent rainstorm or mowed down by an inattentive spectator, I found myself caught up in the words that others had shared:  "I am at my best when I am with my daughter"; "I struggle with finding an alternative to self-righteousness and self-hatred"; "I am my best every day because I know I am a child of God."  It's amazing to me how the weight of one's own struggles feels so much lighter when one is aware of the burdens others are carrying; being attuned to others' struggles and taking full account of others' joys can have the effect of lightening one's own load.

My physical burdens actually multiplied when I entered McCabe to see Pato's photo exhibit and window installations;  in the middle of the space which was hung with photos capturing images of Pato's breath on a wintry L.A. evening was a booksale conducted by Friends of the Library - trade paperbacks for $2.00, and mass market editions for a buck.  Collections of writings by Howard Thurman and Martin Buber!  A Moon guide to Pennsylvania! Benedetto Croce's Aesthetics! And a new (to me, anyway) work by Eduardo Galeano entitled Walking Words, with woodcuts by José Francisco Borges.  Galeano intersperses his retellings of folk tales and urban legends with aphorisms, tabloid headlines, and random observations: in a short section entitled "Windows on Walls" he shares the following:

In Lima: We don't want to survive.  We want to live.
In Havana: You can dance to anything.
In Rio  de Janeiro: He who is afraid of living is never born.