Clare Crombie's Diary - October, 1995

What is ugliness? Who decides? Beauty? What is beauty? I think, as polarities, they are very strongly ensconced (I like that word, wanted to use it) in my mind. Thinking which thinks itself is at the back of perception, thinking which tumbles straight in on top of perception, consciousness framing awareness. Naming of parts.

"This is nice, that is nasty, this is pain, this pleasure, this is pretty, that is plain, this is boring, that interesting, this beautiful, this ugly. A sparrow is ordinary, a kingfisher special. Why? How? Are there good and bad smells? Or, as David Steindle Rast said in a recorded talk, "only good smells in the wrong place". So is an "ugly" building a collection of materials torn from their right place, stuck together and put down far from where they should be? In an alienated state and "ugly" because of that.

I went to Sainsbury's this morning, in torrential rain. Crowds of shoppers stood just outside the shop waiting for the shower to pass. The building was made quite "beautiful" to me by the thick spouts of water that poured from the roof, so that I felt as though I was standing under a fountain, as though I was part of a fountain. I glanced at the man who stood nearest to me and caught my mind almost instantaneously make a judgement based on my perception of his face. Mind relayed to me, "a bit hard", flat, unwelcoming". I turned away from him, semi aware that I had deposited him on the ugly side of things. In contrast, a young Bengali woman came out pushing a trolley. A little girl maybe four or so, was sitting in it, her bare feet looking inviting, soft and strokable. She was singing to herself. Judgement sorted out those two, surrounded them with a soft loving glow and deposited them up at the "beauty" end of the polarity. There I stood in the middle, with beauty on one side, beast on the other. Mind had things in their place.

Suddenly the "ugly" man on my right spoke to me. "What are they building over there"? he asked, pointing at a building site the other side of the car park. It was as though we had already been having a conversation. I was a little surprised that he was speaking about something other than the spouts of water, the torrents of rain which were so figural. He seemed to have an Australian accent. Mind did a speedy bit of map making and cartwheeling. He didn't fit in with it's categorising of Whitechapel. Who was he, how come he was here? What made him think I would know what "they" are building over there? (Will it be ugly?). Mind was interested in spite of itself. We talked for a few moments, I asked him if he was on foot, no, he had a car in the car park. I was captivated by this human being and polarities fell away. I was no longer aware of "beauty" on my left.

Soon I decided to leave, the torrents didn't look like stopping and part of me enjoys getting thoroughly soaked on my bike anyway. So I said "Bye" to the "ugly" man. He had a reddish face and white hair and was quite a lot taller than me. I imagined him watching me go to my bike. I had someone to take my leave from, a point of reference in the crowd, a tiny link. Mind struggled a bit, wanting to put him over on the other side of the polarity now. "But he might be a rapist, a child abuser, a fraud ". What is anyone? A moment of being, in relation, a moment of exchange, coming in the midst of a host of judgements, of desire to name and have people in fixed places on a continuum. A moment of clear seeing removing the veil of projections, interpretations, words, naming.

I've been to another Authentic Movement workshop. Learning how not to name and quantify, how not to pin the other down with judgements of beauty or ugliness is what the process offers, both as Mover and Witness. This time Tiana Stomsted described how she had started her journey in Authentic Movement by spending three years as a mover, without having to take the place of witness. She said it was a luxury for which she wasn't sure we have time now. (The journey she was speaking of started 12 years ago and time is galloping these days, time and process). She feels urgently "How can we witness each other"?

How can we see things as they are? I had a dream during the workshop which involved cutting flesh in strips from someone's back. Quite methodically, like a job I had learned to do. Getting down to the bare bones.

At the ending of the workshop Tina produced a huge slab of chocolate and a large knife to cut it. Knives can be "ugly", and in the right place................

This is a poem I wrote after a movement episode. Later I recognised that I had used the same sounds for rhyming as in the shorter one I wrote after the May workshop.