Still Moving, not a Still Frame

Nora Bateson
12 min readMay 30, 2024

(trying not to forget that we are all creatures may be very important right now)

Where is the edge of me? (painting, Nora Bateson)

Moving

We who are alive today, are here — dripping with sticky clumps of yesterdays, and slippery wisps of tomorrows.

The time labyrinth is pressing the tubes of familiar existential by-products of the pasts, up against the membranes of twisting immanent confusion. The stories of before and forthcoming are digesting each other.

What happened? What will happen? What is happening? Each curvature in the day touches the sides of time, absorbing, transmitting through the membranes that sculpt the water we see our reflections in.

In this movement our bodies, our hearts, souls and minds tangle and whisper at the edge of possible futures.

We are the line that is the horizon. And it is not a line, the horizon only appeared to be a line.

We are a forest of trees reaching our roots into the dark nutrients of the soil, and our branches into the sunlight and wind.

We hold the sky; we are held by the earth.

Anyone alive now, is here for this era of movement –so much of life is in the balance. What would they say, our ancestors who shaped stones, cured animal skins, and stayed close to the fires where stories were…

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Nora Bateson
Nora Bateson

Written by Nora Bateson

Filmmaker, writer, educator, lecturer, President of the Intl Bateson Inst. Books: Small Arcs of Larger Circles 2016, Combining, 2023.