The Impossible Swan

The Impossible Swan is a stable structure within the entropic chaos of the cosmos. It retains its shape-in-change as it glides through life. Its featherweight wing touches the world with Grace.

You can embody the Impossible Swan through your personal sense and expression of Grace. While this may include conscious, elegant form and movement, Grace is more than that. It is a soft and gentle response to weakness and loss, your own and that of others. And it is a stern resistance to and courage in the face of pressure that asks you to betray your values or cause harm. All this with the awareness of linear time and inevitable mortality.

It is a sense of purpose, not in spite of everything ending, but because of it. When your living waveform finally collapses, the ripples you have made will remain and move on toward infinity. Let Grace be their shape.

Acknowledgments

The Impossible Swan would not have been possible without the help of the following wonderful people:

• Alexander Zacherl
• Heather Kelley
• Kortney "Sparklykiss" Terry
• Martin Buntz

Inspiration

The Impossible Swan was inspired by many different sources. The key catalyst that got me moving was the one-page RPG jam with the theme of Elegance. With that in the back of my head a number of different things came together to create this little game:

• This one inspirational dance class I joined on a whim
• Avery Alder's Good Bones, the first embodied game I read
• Trying to reinvigorate my creative passion through the book The Artist's Way from Julia Cameron
• My reading on positive psychology
• This YouTube video An Antidote to Dissatisfaction from In A Nutshell
• My personal practice of yoga and meditation

I hope it brings some Grace into your life.

Martin