Dance Therapy Intensive: Magic in Movement
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? - Yeats
It's as though I've been given a set of special lenses and now I need time to explore these new lenses because at this very moment it's like seeing the world for the first time and there's so much to see that I never noticed before and it's all happening at once. I need time for re-entry, re-seeing, re-experiencing the dance that is my life. YES, it was wonder-FULL!
Articulating my dance:
I'm spinning several projects at once. It reminds me of when I was a wee girl sitting on my Grandpa's lap watching the Ed Sullivan Show and there was this dude spinning plates on sticks. It's kind of like that. Everything seemed to grow in warp speed while I was away and now there are four lemons on my little lemon tree. If only you could have seen my happy dance for that discovery - you would have laughed. The Honey Locusts are so lush you can't even see their spiky thorns, and the wild mulberries are ripe and so yummy, and the black walnut tree outside my studio already bears fruit for making a new batch of walnut ink this Fall. The community pool opened whilst I was in NY and I returned in time to start some seasonal laps and that's good, very good. That feeling of weightlessness and then the way gravity greets me as I pull myself out of the pool - that tension of opposites.
It's also Lindy season which means it's time to shake the rust off these tail feathers and get ready for the swing set. My late dad was a Lindy-hopper and my first memory of music was that of Louis and Ella andGoodman et al. Did I ever tell you that when I moved to Syracuse I won tickets to a swing event to shim sham shimmy with the great Frankie Manning? True dat! He wore glow rings around his neck and he called me "doll" and I can still hear his gravely voice saying "shim sham time now shake it" and then how he laughed - and oh how my dad would have flipped his lid if he could have seen that moment. Mr. Manning died a few years later so I was very lucky. Very lucky.
There are so many of these thoughts dancing in my head…is it any wonder why I go there? It's sort of like basting and I think it's what makes my soul juicy and tender. My way of being in the world is in living it fully, all the way to the edge of my skin…living it to the point of tears and living it with laughter so saturated with joy that my ribs ache trying to contain it. I like sharing that part of me. And occasionally I find myself in fear, but I do my best to stare it down even though it makes my legs tremble. And when I have sorrow it always shows up in the form of salt, albeit in tears or by sweating it out on a good hike. I don't always share my sorrow and I don't know if that makes me a good friend or a shitty one. But when living it the way that I do gets to be a lot, I go back inside my head and that's okay because it's a mostly nice place to be. And what that feels like is…like standing on the shore and the ocean pulls at your ankles and you begin to sink into the sand and it feels like you are moving at great speed, but you are really standing still. That's what it feels like when I sink inside myself. And sometimes, when I need to, I can move outward beyond skin and from that perspective I can really see the "her" that is me and when I see "her" I know that I love "her" and maybe I love "her" more than anyone else can because I know "her" so well and I like what I know about "her".
(and I like what I know about you too)
And then sometimes (like today) I can go sit and be neither in my head, nor in my body, nor outside of it. And in that moment the sound of my breathing becomes the sound of all breathing and then that too expands to becomes the breeze I hear outside and then it all becomes one and I am not outside of it, but within all of it.
Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience...
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? - Yeats
It's as though I've been given a set of special lenses and now I need time to explore these new lenses because at this very moment it's like seeing the world for the first time and there's so much to see that I never noticed before and it's all happening at once. I need time for re-entry, re-seeing, re-experiencing the dance that is my life. YES, it was wonder-FULL!
Articulating my dance:
I'm spinning several projects at once. It reminds me of when I was a wee girl sitting on my Grandpa's lap watching the Ed Sullivan Show and there was this dude spinning plates on sticks. It's kind of like that. Everything seemed to grow in warp speed while I was away and now there are four lemons on my little lemon tree. If only you could have seen my happy dance for that discovery - you would have laughed. The Honey Locusts are so lush you can't even see their spiky thorns, and the wild mulberries are ripe and so yummy, and the black walnut tree outside my studio already bears fruit for making a new batch of walnut ink this Fall. The community pool opened whilst I was in NY and I returned in time to start some seasonal laps and that's good, very good. That feeling of weightlessness and then the way gravity greets me as I pull myself out of the pool - that tension of opposites.
It's also Lindy season which means it's time to shake the rust off these tail feathers and get ready for the swing set. My late dad was a Lindy-hopper and my first memory of music was that of Louis and Ella andGoodman et al. Did I ever tell you that when I moved to Syracuse I won tickets to a swing event to shim sham shimmy with the great Frankie Manning? True dat! He wore glow rings around his neck and he called me "doll" and I can still hear his gravely voice saying "shim sham time now shake it" and then how he laughed - and oh how my dad would have flipped his lid if he could have seen that moment. Mr. Manning died a few years later so I was very lucky. Very lucky.
There are so many of these thoughts dancing in my head…is it any wonder why I go there? It's sort of like basting and I think it's what makes my soul juicy and tender. My way of being in the world is in living it fully, all the way to the edge of my skin…living it to the point of tears and living it with laughter so saturated with joy that my ribs ache trying to contain it. I like sharing that part of me. And occasionally I find myself in fear, but I do my best to stare it down even though it makes my legs tremble. And when I have sorrow it always shows up in the form of salt, albeit in tears or by sweating it out on a good hike. I don't always share my sorrow and I don't know if that makes me a good friend or a shitty one. But when living it the way that I do gets to be a lot, I go back inside my head and that's okay because it's a mostly nice place to be. And what that feels like is…like standing on the shore and the ocean pulls at your ankles and you begin to sink into the sand and it feels like you are moving at great speed, but you are really standing still. That's what it feels like when I sink inside myself. And sometimes, when I need to, I can move outward beyond skin and from that perspective I can really see the "her" that is me and when I see "her" I know that I love "her" and maybe I love "her" more than anyone else can because I know "her" so well and I like what I know about "her".
(and I like what I know about you too)
And then sometimes (like today) I can go sit and be neither in my head, nor in my body, nor outside of it. And in that moment the sound of my breathing becomes the sound of all breathing and then that too expands to becomes the breeze I hear outside and then it all becomes one and I am not outside of it, but within all of it.
Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience...
Labels: art and craft
