I had a student once\u2026it was only after many years of working with her, that I learned she ran track. This is ironic. And has everything to do with her gift; the gift of going slow. The gift was really born out of fear, I think. She has a rod in her neck. It has been a while since I worked with her, so the particulars are fuzzy. But I suppose the particulars, the facts, aren\u2019t necessarily all that important, for my purposes here. It\u2019s the take-away, the story (however much, or little, it strays from the truth) that still speaks to me\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was a woman of few words, but when she did talk, it was in this low and slow voice, powered by an economy of words and breath. \u201cHow are you today?\u201d I would ask. \u201cI think so\u201d she would say. \u201cI think so\u201d and \u201cyes, I do\u201d were her answers for most things. Sometimes the answers didn\u2019t fit\u2026but I suppose they did, too. The cadence of her voice, her speech, her way of speaking, were in keeping with her walk. And this is what she was known for. She was slow, real slow. And often, maddeningly slow. This is the woman I have always known, the slow one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When transportation arrived at the end of the day, she needed to be escorted out\u2026or she may have never begun the journey in the first place! She didn\u2019t want to go, I suppose, or she didn\u2019t want to move anyway, so we would have to prod this body at rest to become a body in motion. And once she was in motion, one was at the mercy of her pace. She was driving the momentum. I would wrap my arm around hers and pull, gently. If I pulled too hard, too fast, she would pull back, hard. She has Down syndrome, and if you have ever tried to arm wrestle someone with Down syndrome, (as I was known to do) you know how strong they are. Arm wrestling was fun in a comical, sort of self-deprecating (on my end) way. It was intimate and equalizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because she was a woman of few words (by choice, I am sure), there was much more being communicated through the body, through the linking of our arms and the matching of our pace. I realized rather quickly not to fight it, to just show up, to push as needed, but not pull, to go with her flow\u2026to go slow. She showed me how to go slow, and even demanded it of me, at times. I often thought of her as a sort of Zen master. Every time she took my arm, or I hers, in our forward motion together, our wordless dance an almost tug of war, I was instantly reminded, oh, yes\u2026we are going slow, listen to her prompting<\/em>. So, I would practice going slow, ridiculously show. Slow exaggerated. I would be present in the slowness (not all the time, though\u2026it was difficult), and feel gratitude (when I actually listened) for her this wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, she did everything slow, she spoke slow (and low), she ate slow, and she walked slow of course. She even would draw slow. Many of my students had become accustomed to finishing a drawing in one class period, from start to finish. But she methodically started at one end of her 8 \u00bd by 11 sheet of paper and would get maybe only through a 5th<\/sup> of the sheet. She would start by folding the paper in half (I hated that part; improper art handling)! Maybe she did it so that it didn\u2019t seem so daunting, or precious. She would work from one end of the page, making light, feathery marks in her usual multi-colored palette of colored pencils. The result was an almost Agnes Martin sort of way of marking a field of space, the page filled with a sea of color blocks, composed of soft lines, forming a loose grid. Her marks, marked presence, in a way. I\u2019m here and I\u2019m working. I shall not deviate from this pace. <\/em>And as with walking, she could not be rushed. Often, a new sheet was begun at the beginning of each new class, until I realized there was an ever-growing stack of unfinished drawings. It was then, that it became incumbent on me to bring her the unfinished drawing, each day, until it was complete. This could take weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But let us remember, she could<\/em> go fast. She did<\/em> go fast. She ran track, after all. The slowness was her choice, her way of controlling the present moment. And like so many of us, this practice was born out of fear, out of trauma even. She may have had some sort of accident, or injury, I don\u2019t recall exactly. She certainly had undergone surgery, as evidenced by the pretty intense scar down the back of her neck. I\u2019m not sure how far it continued down her spine. There was always a sort of mystery around my students. We often had to guess at them. One thing I do know, is that the one instance when she was quick, was when she threw her body into a laugh. She would cover her face with one or both hands erupting with a sort of snorting, guffaw, as she pulled an arm around her torso almost simultaneously kicking back and then bending and curling over in a fit of embarrassed spasm; her own form of knee slapping, I guess. And in that low, slow voice say, \u201cI\u2019m joking, I\u2019m joking.\u201d Even though it was me who was joking, it was me who made her laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had a great sense of humor, and a kind of natural comedic timing (at least to me), that I loved to play with and riff off of. She had a distinct, and sort of funny, haircut. I guess it was a pageboy haircut, the 70\u2019s version. She wore what I would call a neckerchief, a scarf or bandana tied in a knot around her neck, to cover the scar, to keep her warm, she would say. I loved her. I found her hilarious. And I loved it when she laughed at my shtick, my mini, impromptu performances for my students. She made me laugh, and I wanted to make her laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She was a profound person, profoundly human, wrapped up with both the comedy and the tragedy of life. Her profoundness was perhaps born out of her fear, her trauma, her need to control in an uncertain world. I think she taught me more than I ever taught her. In fact, with her, I never really taught her anything, I just showed up for her. But she showed me how to go slow. And when I am rushing myself, rushing through life, allowing myself to get caught up in being rushed, resisting being rushed. When I berate myself for going slowly through life, slow to accomplishment, slow to finish a task and check another item off my list. I am reminded of the cadence of her walk. I am reminded how nice it felt to relax into it, when I would allow myself to fall in rhythm with it. And it was then that I would tell myself it is ok to go slow, <\/em>there is wisdom in it. There is presence, there is pause, there is stillness. And then the hamster wheel in my brain halts its feverish pace, and I can let go of the need to control, and I can just receive this moment of air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reciprocity of fast and slow, of doing and not doing, movement and rest, is a funny one. One is always chasing the tail of the other. We must train with the duality, calibrating our person to the spaces in between, the sweet spot of flow. Movement flows into rest. Fast becomes slow. And slow becomes a sort of quickening. \u201cI think so\u201d!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a student once\u2026it was only after many years of working with her, that I learned she ran track. … <\/p>\n