"See! Saw! Margery Daw!"

xposted at: http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2011/03/16/balanc/

“Johnny has found a new maaaaaster….he can pay but a penny a day, because he can’t work any faaaaaster!”

That song used to make me laugh as my dad, and sometimes my mom, would sing it with me when we were on the See Saw. I didn’t realize how much they were pushing up to make me feel like I was getting them in the air. And I loved when they sat down placing me in the air. The ups and downs made my belly flip and I laughed with delight, and just a little bit of fear, when I felt the bump as their end hit the ground. Sometimes they’d tease me and stay seated. I’d swing my legs and look down at the ground. What if I fell? Half the fun was wondering. The other half was knowing I was safe. And then Mom or Dad would level it out, bring it back to balance. The fun would come to an end; it was time to get off the See Saw.

I’ve been remembering that because I’ve been thinking about balance recently. Balance is such a mundane word. It’s so utilitarian. It’s used for weighing something, or perching something, and for describing a state of being whether in regards to a single organism, or the entire cosmos.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of the word in English dates back to the 9th Century CE, though Euripides described the concept of balance as far back as the 5th Century BCE ( “The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” Euripides).

And what is balance? The day after the 8.9 earthquake in Japan, a large chunk of the world away, where reactors were beginning heat up and start their terrifying journey creating some sort of outlet for themselves, it was a beautiful day in L.A. The sun shone. The sky was blue. The breeze had that slight tang of beach – seawater, salt, sand. It was a perfect day. Was that balance?

If you grab one of those fantastic tools called a thesaurus, or my favorite, Rodale’s Synonym Finder, and look up the word balance, you will find six inches worth of words in 8 point font.Words of varying pedigree and age, but arguably as much history. Words like equilibrium, acumen, aplomb, poise, equipoise, steady, uniformity, evenness, reckoning, estimation, counterpoise, reason, sanity, weigh, ponder, deliberate, align, range… the list goes on. You could write an entire scene using mostly words that mean balance:

She sat poised on the chair with great aplomb, breathing evenly, awaiting the deliberation. The jury had some reason, in her estimation. She wondered, though, as they weighed her innocence against her guilt. Would they question her sanity? In a moment she faced her reckoning. With the uniformity of the justice system they declared her…

See – it could go on for a while.

Aplomb isn’t used much anymore (which is too bad) and dates from the 19th Century. I like to think that cats work to keep the concept of aplomb alive. They certainly seem to have plenty of it.

Poise, counterpoise and equipoise all come from variations in the 13th-14th Centuries. When did we cease teaching poise to people? I guess we assumed people would just pick it up. But, while you could say nature seeks balance, you wouldn’t say it seeks poise. Poise needs to be taught. But first the beings learning poise need to understand the concept of balance, and know what it is to be balanced, even – not constantly on an up or down.

But, we don’t allow for that anymore, do we. Everything is up or down. There is no “even keel”. We’re so enamored of the See Saw ride – we want to keep that belly flip. Not that there’s anything wrong with the belly flip, but eventually, we gotta come down, or at least even out. Eventually, osmosis works to create an equilibrium between spaces. Eventually, boundaries are reached, rebounding back and forth until some kind of accord – kinetic or otherwise – is reached.

My dad fixes pinball machines. He fixes other bar games and video games, but his father was in the pinball business and so it fell to my dad to get into it as well. When you play pinball, it’s all about keeping the ball off balance long enough to hit things and make points without QUITE throwing the machine off balance. So to get more points, you gotta get that steel ball to bounce the right spots at the right angles. When the ball finally does find it’s own equilibrium – well – that’s when you’ve lost the ball down the hole.

It’s easier for me to find balance when I’m in my own world – of course. Easier when I’m gardening and ignoring the world around me. Easier when I’m reading a book and listening to my iPod, shutting out everything else. Easier when I’ve shut and locked the door and decided I’m not leaving for the weekend.

Out in the great world out there, I might, like the steel ball, hit the wrong band, get stuck in the wrong hole, or set off the wrong lights, get bruised and bounced around while I seek all those “points” I’m supposed to be seeking.

I might lose balance.

Or, maybe I could learn from my four-footed friends and gather aplomb and poise around me like a fur cloak to keep the world from battering me about too much.

And now we’re at that point in this blog when you’re wondering what is the point? And there is none, unless you’re talking about the point that is used to balance…



Happy St. Patrick’s Day. And if you’re looking for something to read, check out The Oracle of Themazuri at Mindflights.com.