Doing nothing. Important!

Meanwhile, back at the Orchard, we're in the middle of our annual Camp - students come for one session of music composition on iPad, storyboard a story they want to tell, then go home, shoot it. Then one session to edit it into a finished video.

Saturday, all that week's groups combine for a film festival.

This is our third year. Enrollment and teaching are at the highest level we've seen. I'm very proud of how the whole store has rallied to make this the best possible experience for our young guests.

I'm also amazed at how much pure connect-the-dots hands-on I-have-to-get-this-done WORK the whole thing is.

I shouldn't be, but I am. Every damn time.

Like a runner (or a confirmed walker) I love the feeling of mental motion, of the brain and spirit working together to forge a connection that gets you to a new place.

Also, like a runner, you're sore afterwards.

The Cirque du Soleil has a saying - "If an acrobat wakes up in the morning and isn't in pain, he's dead". Pithy, but accurate.

So between taking extra-long walks around the city - 4.75 miles yesterday - I've discovered that it's perfectly OK to go to one of the most beautiful spots in Portland - if not the North American continent - spread out a blanket, tuck my sandals under my head for a pillow and watch clouds go by until awakened by a cool breeze and the barking of a child and the laughter of a dog.

The Eastern Promenade Gazebo is the site of our famous Gazebo Milongas. Usually held on any good-weather Summer Friday we gather to dance and enjoy a spectacular view of Portland Harbor and the near Islands.

I find it to be a great place to experience quiet.

The sun is very warm, the breeze cooling - though I wish I'd brought a sweater. The flags on the various war memorials snap loudly, even as far above my head as they are.

I've always been a cloud-watcher - probably why I've never gotten married or don't own my own house.  This was a perfect day for high, cirrus clouds, faint brush-strokes of white.

Sometimes clouds are giant New York Times Square neon signs, great big fluffy graffiti crowding the welkin's spaces (look it up) overhead. Your head explodes with ideas and the convivial merriment of life.

Others tell stories in quiet block letters and your imagination thinks of friends, home, gentle music.

And some clouds, like now, are simple lines, almost like Chinese calligraphy overhead, leading you to think bare, primary thoughts of bare, primary sensory feelings - breathing, moving, grass under your toes, the very moment you are in, the feelings inside you right now - and nothing more important than that.

So for a brief, non-determined space of time my mind and spirit stop reaching outside of myself and reach inward - flexing themselves just for the joy of their own movement.

Or they stop focussing obsessively inward and reach outward - connecting purely with the surrounding world, carrying only what they sense - relaxed, open to the voice of the wind, moving where it blows them.

Until finally I know it's time to stop, to take my new camera (thank you, C!) and see what it is I'm looking at.

Point taken. Lesson learned.

Portland, Maine