Noguchi Museum

The work of Isamu Noguchi brings me calm. As did the day I took the train to visit the Noguchi Museum in Queens, another stop on the Peace and Quiet trail.

I'm reading a brilliant book right now called "Sensing, Feeling, and Action" by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Noguchi's work reminds me of anatomy and cells and all those little shapes and squiggles deep inside cells that are working together to keep us alive. So, I'm going to bring their work together here.

All over the place in all of our bodies is a point between coming and going. It's called the zone of the isoring. The capillary isoring is where our veins and arteries meet. Veins carry blood to the heart, and arteries carry blood away from the heart. The zone of the isoring is that place, that moment, in between. I like what Cohen says about arteries, here,

The blood flowing from the lungs to the heart is the richest, most oxygenated blood. The first cells to receive freshly oxygenated blood from the heart are the heart cells themselves, for the heart must be nurtured before it can nurture other cells. It is interesting that the coronary arteries (the arteries that bring fresh blood from the heart to the heart) are, in our culture, a common sight of stagnation and a primary cause of heart attacks. We are a very outer-directed culture and tend to drive ourselves and overlook our need to nourish ourselves.