Wednesday, July 26, 2017

time starts taking the back roads, avoiding sunsets & deep conversations

I.
The edge of the deck was just far enough out of alignment
that if we didn't correct the difference now, it would grow

I did what I have always done, sat down and leaned back
drew my knees to my chest to generate as much force in that
short distance between the steel frame of the deck
and my heels

Calcaneus
now I know its name
the bone resounding with a dull pain
and I suddenly understand
I ask it to do a job
far beyond its sophisticated relationship
with my body and gravity

how many parts of my body
have been called into battle
asked to be a hammer
rather then articulate

what else could it do but fall apart
voiceless
because I was too busy

busy doing everything but listening.










At night I go outside so the stars can look at me

One of those mornings
where there is a fight in the dog park
A large, muscular male who felt somehow threatened
by a bouncy, curious female puppy growing quickly
into her long legs
His growls were lost in her cries of pain
ricocheting off the concrete structures around us
I hesitated to respond, both of their owners were
a half step away
much closer than I

the puppy's owner made scared noises, her hands in the air
the male's owner's hands were full of personal items
he pushed uselessly at his dog
I dropped my coffee and ran into the fray

so often when I'm at the park, I watch these people
on their phones or just vastly unaware
of the clear body language, of the shift in sounds
emanating from the creatures they are responsible for
and suddenly I am the one on the ground peeling two animals
helplessly caught in a stress response
away from each other

now I am thinking a lot about the hopeful optimism
that inspires animal adoption
how blinding it can be
ignoring their shadows and potential manifestations
is somehow not accepting the wholeness of the creature
now dependent on us

and how being able to wrestle with the fears and insecurities
that bubble up and play out in mini dramas between
our subtle, emotional/hormonal beasts
is part of the job of accepting ownership

I would rather be bitten
by the blind rage of another animal
than for my dog to learn I wouldn't be there
while she fights for her life
and eventually change her disposition
to account for that potential
to no longer trust me
or anyone

and I wonder how that
has changed me
what I notice
look for
how I engage with the world in response
to what I have witnessed

how do we come back from that place
animals, all of us
how do we change something that used to be true?

Friday, July 14, 2017

Support precedes Movement: Reflection for week 8



My roommate has expressed repeated interest in having me guide her in a yoga practice, and I noticed how clearly she was looking for a kind of work-out activity on this particular morning, rather than the exploratory questioning place I've been moving from these past weeks. So I gave her shapes. For some reason I was called in my body to move with her, and I'm not sure if I was trying to provide support by making it so she wasn't practicing alone, or if I was exploring what I felt I needed to be supported in each of the poses I took us through, to have a clearer sense of what I believed about them. Later when we chatted about it, she mentioned resonating with a moment when I touched her feet and hand as I talked about how they were in supportive communication with the ground - and I continue to notice moments where a certain kind of directed touch that helps them to know something about themselves has been really appreciated by my students. I have an inkling about a vocabulary building, an overlap between the study I've done and the awareness in my fingertips, like a potential divining rod for pathways, currents of force.

My peer that I practiced with has mentioned to me on multiple occasions being disconnected from her body, or grossly unaware of it. It felt kind of huge and superfluous to talk about shapes, so I went back to a place I know - we sat and I touched, said hello to and named every bone in her body I could remember (on her right side, I told her the other side was up to her), starting from her fingertips inward, down the parts of the vertebrae I could access, and then from her toes up. We wiggled joints and tried to figure out which ways bones spin in their sockets and she talked about what she felt and what she didn't. Afterwards I had her do some familiar movements, take a flow etc. With that information, of what both she and I noticed, we unearthed some interesting connections between unmoving parts and physical hang ups transitioning between certain tricky poses. We talked about how to find the kind of room or time for moments of personal body exploration in an hour class with a bunch of bodies in various states of awareness - and an hour and a half after I started, I finally came to a place where I might be able to transmute what I've been learning the past 2/3 years into something useful, something that can come out of me in a potentially helpful way.

These two experiences really asked things from me that seem like they live on opposite ends of the spectrum, but maybe one is the warp, and the other is the woof, and I need to figure out some other crucial things - the shape of the loom, the colors of the threads, the pattern I'm looking to weave.






xo