Valerie Jeremijenko

“We say that the body is a temple, because we know that it’s nothing but mortal architecture without the self-regard of consciousness and conscience. The contemplative moment draws us to our sources; we see inside. We close our eyes, in fact, in order to see with clarity. Indeed, the imagination asks us to see with our eyes closed. So we make connections in the dark and thus we imagine what our bodies can do and be, how the breath of the spirit can come and go with perfection, how the ladder gravity of the spine can soar. Poets speak of rhythm and breath as the lifeline of the poetic line; they speak of form as the embodiment of the poem’s energy, the bodying forth of its meaning and being. To expire is to breathe out, to inspire is to breath in. To aspire is to breathe with the mind, to give purpose to the heart’s rhythm. The spine is an aspiration too, since it lifts us from foundations. To imagine what the body can achieve is to invest it with awareness-to begin to make it twice alive: first as a body, then as an embodiment.”