Of course, that's what water does.

I.
everything is changing
like, more than usual
I used to prefer it that way
I knew myself in chaos,
because I was a wall
rooted to myself in such a way
that I always knew up from down

but I gave that job away
cause I had other things I wanted to be
and it was getting in my way

I know myself
what I'm worth
what I believe
better than I did
this time last year
maybe up and down
are relative

I realize
this is probably
why people have mothers

in a class last week
I was asked to orient to the ground
as I rolled from my side to my belly
I was so focused on being
a conduit for forces
the idea of holding an intention of movement
at the same time seemed mysterious, foreign,
a revelation

this is how we are meant
to move through life I realized
how exhaustingly huge.


II.
in the shower it struck me, as I recounted my day
that I seem to collect Taurus employers, Captains of Industry
and as bizarrely secretive and possessive as my mother

also a Taurus

forceful, emotionally demanding, tricky with the information they share
molding the people and world around them into a landscape of their liking

to their advantage

also unwilling to ask for a certain kind of help, a safe space to expose
their weaknesses unless it is a ploy, to help protect them in the long run
Scorpio is the Sorcerer, a mover of people and matter

I am an ideal helpmeet

Just like Ariadne, keeper of the keys to the labyrinth
which leads to the bull at its center, waiting for human sacrifices
given as tribute from the surrounding villages

I finally understand who the Minotaur is

who do I give my gift to
this thread to find their way back from my depths
after killing the monster the haunts me?


III.
once, in the throes of puberty
my self disgust manifested
as physical punishment and I knew
I needed something so I stood in front of my mother
paralyzed, voiceless
she put her arms around me and I was stone
in that embrace but before any part of me
had time to melt she pulled away
yelling at me because of some weird insecurity
maybe she felt rejected
I just needed her to hold on long enough that
I could turn from stone to flesh again

I think it was around that time that
I started to shut down
my stepfather's eyes and words were so often on my body
like it was a thing that didn't really belong to me
and I was starting to understand that my mother
wasn't going to protect me from what comes next
he was institutionalized before it got that far
but the next decade or so was a blur
of out of body sexual experiences

A weird disturbance arose today, low in my pelvic bowl
a whisper of what might be considered a period cramp
something I've never dealt with in my entire bloody life
I usually get migraines instead, blinding, nauseous, debilitating
every 28 days or so

sitting on the subway, mulling over this little, pulsing, precursor to pain
I thought about my recent fling with a handsome foreigner
a stunning project we all worked on together, and how utterly female
curvaceous and powerful I felt showing up to work alongside him
a part of myself that I've hidden for as long as I could remember
reveling in my own femininity, tasting another human being
with nothing but pleasure in mind for the first time in my life

were those migraines a manifestation of those things I cut off
since I first began to bud
blinding, nauseous, debilitating
what does this new pulsing sharpness mean?

Breath as a Medium: Reflection for week 1

This one struck me because I have found breath-as-respite a confusing concept - evidence of a transition between states of emotional coherence/control, an often annoying mechanical function I'm usually pretty happy to ignore since my body can do it without my direct involvement, and the idea of anything as a potential form of expression is a line of inquiry I want to lather myself in, (like a baby with a jar of peanut butter) to unearth how it can be harnessed to help a voice be heard.

Before I took the time to consider my relationship to breath this past week, I had no awareness of the disconnect I was feeling when instructed to go back to the breath, to use the breath, to notice it at all. A piece of my childhood keeps coming up, especially as I followed this question - My stepfather used to shut me in the bathroom when I got upset because I often lost control of my ability to form words through the heaving, hiccuping, strangled breathing, like I was drowning on dry land. He wouldn't release his hand from the doorknob outside until I could breath normally, which sometimes took a very long time. In retrospect, I suspect it was a kind of anxiety attack I was having, and that loss of control and inability to speak up for myself, these shadows of helplessness and shame are the last places I would probably want to go looking for an anchor or sense of connection. As I consider how many times in a yoga class I've instructed about returning to the breath, of finding it, filling a shape with it etc, all respectable statements in light of its lineage - it seems a really clear example of a place where I've repeated motions rather than speaking from or even considering my own experience or relationship to what I am asking a body of individuals to partake in. At work, I make a real conscious effort to never ask one of my crew guys to do something I myself am not capable of doing, so this bit really shook me.

I feel like there is a strong correlation between drawing and practicing asana, layers of focus and awareness, and by flipping one for the other I get to take away the groove a student (of either discipline) might comfortably lean into. For Sunday's teaching game, I played into the idea of the Perceptual Cycle and the limited resource of our Attention, as well as Sam's meditation that involved shifting our states of awareness - I really liked how those shifts were so distinct in the back to back contrast. So I asked my partner to use his inhales to take in what he was looking at, and let his exhales become a gestural release/exploration of the information received via a pen in his hand to the sketchbook in his lap (I blocked his ability to see the paper, an attempt to remove the focus on judging its product, which alters the ability to engage fully in the noticing).

How does what comes in (via environment, senses, interactions) become an expression of its affect on us? How does an inhale transform into an exhale, how does a breath become a movement?

Both of the individuals I taught this week talked about regular difficulty and lack of connection to their breath, when we talked about it afterwards. I had continued the inhale to notice, exhale to move, and they both experienced the drawing mediation described above prior to taking it into the rest of the body. My non yogi friend felt that the literalness, 'concrete' in her words, of pen to paper drew a distinct connection between a familiar action and the presence of breath - and that bridge helped her feel agency, ease, and purpose in the breath focused movements we explored. I wonder if that is one of those things so fundamental it gets forgotten, not just our awareness of it, but our RELATIONSHIP with breathing. How can I take a step even farther back and help build something to anchor to? How can I weave the sensations of breathing and movement together in my language and my daily life? How many ways can I find to bridge between the taking in and the letting go, to maybe see how our individual expressions arise out of the conversation between them? How can I create a dialogue not based on the assumption that the foundation is already there, when I may be trying to build something on top of uneven ground? I may not be the only one who sometimes feels like I'm drowning on dry land. What is the pathway in? Can my words and the space I shape be a kind of divining rod?




I'm also starting to get a clear sense that it is a collaboration, that there is something between the teacher and student being woven, crafted, made real, but I can't quite see the nature of the artwork that we are working on together, whether I am the student or the teacher. At least not yet.

in my metaphor, he wants to learn quantum mechanics instead of architecture

I.
Mythologies
Archetypes
Roles
Jobs


II.
Does the mind have states
the way matter has states?

Can I pour myself into stillness,
into the container of my body

My mom called me a ray of refracted light
but I didn't respond, she has me all wrong

I want to be the Prism
that light passes through



III.
We automatically assume aliens arrive
with their own foreign wisdom

Why don't we assume the same
about children?


IV.
For every hollowness
there is a voluminous - ness

In every curve there is the experience
of concavity and convexity

Straightness has nothing to do
with goodness


V.
damage can trigger
a cell to choose
a different career

express a different
part of its identity
potential


VI.
Maybe the Eyes see for the Hand
Maybe the Hand expresses the desires
of the Ribcage, to taste, to be connected
Maybe the Mouth forms words
to sing the Siren's song of the Heart

Somewhere there is a confusion
between the desire for connection
and owning it - a colonizing
of the web that cuts off the ability
to notice the forces moving through it,

through us.

colonizing a star is tricky business

*Logo process 



 

*Final logo design

 

 

 *Rough Album Cover Design

 

Post class reflection for Process Work on Conflict in a Relationship @School of Making Thinking:



The movement exercise began with the left hand, which embodied a relationship we were in conflict with. Letting the energy of that individual fill the gesture of the hand, we facilitated the movement that arose, allowing it to grow larger, more specific.

It was clawing and grasping, my whole torso was a hungry mouth that my hungry left hand was trying to feed and it was filled with a muscular and bottomless possessiveness. It couldn't cover enough space in each sweep, so my left hand grew frantic, trying to pull from everywhere at once, ripping my body through space to find, to feed, to claim, calling more and more of my back body into action to fill the yawning cavern of my front body. Grunts fell through my clamped teeth, my lips in a thin, frustrated line like hers, letting my sense of her fill me completely, controlling my movements, motivating my breath, senseless with the helpless, blindly destructive quality of her existence.

Slowly the action dies away, coming to a stillness from which our right hand will eventually move from. There is a way in which embodying that dark force makes clear the feeling and motion called up in my right hand.

The right hand represents Me in the relationship, and yawns open like a flower unfurling towards the sun. I always end up seeing a little girl, when I do explorations of my self-definition in this particular class, but in the exercise, I AM that little girl, not just leaning down to talk to her as she stands in front of me. Focusing on the feeling of BEING this right side selfness rather than reacting to my left side darkness, I radiate cool white light as I turn my face up to some imaginary sunshine, and I scoop up what is inside of me, offering it up, reaching my right hand out hoping to put my hand into someone else's, curling my fingers one at a time around the hand that is not there to receive the gift of myself.

Letting the right hand expression slowly diminish, the left had is invited back in. As a conversation begins between the two sides we are asked to alter the intensities of right and left to explore the ways in which these essences overlap and respond to each other. Eventually my two different gestures begin to register in a dance that moves with the rhythm of breathing - the grasping consumption of my left side seems to be what give my right hand the ability to reach out, to offer myself up, to desire connection to other that lives just beyond my fingertips, just beyond my faith. The taking in and the giving away eventually lost their sequential relationship and like respiration at the cellular level, became a constant function of being alive, in and out from all directions at once, carrying me fluidly through space.

In the stark contrast I can see how I filled in the blanks for my first, most primal relationship, developing reactions and awarenesses in the places where my mother was blind or inefficient, so became a hyper functioning half of a Unit that could never allow me to sustain myself as a singular Whole. In the toxicity of my relationship with the Mother Principle, the only way to stop everything from being taken from the endless exhalation of my spirit was to sever the tie completely. So I cut it out. But without those unexpressed muscles in the form of another person, and a protective shield built up around that tender, bloody part of myself, I can only remain a hyper functioning half of a person, until I reach into the pulp and scar tissue and find a way to push the blood through, to inspire movement - to allow myself to be hungry instead of ashamed and embarrassed by it, so I might one day know fullness, so that I may give because there is plenty, not at the expense of myself. to learn how to inhale for every one of my cells crying out for breath. to inhale because I deserve to. because I need to, NOT because I am selfish. Because it is part of my job on this planet, in this moment. right now.


In a different class earlier that day, I had encountered a similar edge, but having spent most of my life proving to myself and the world that most boundaries don't actually exist - I slammed headfirst into a wall I didn't see coming. It seems I function the best inside of a fight response, it is pushing against these walls that taught me what I am made of. To counteract the boundary-less form of my mother, I have become a wall, a vigilante force, the boundary that no one else will give her. Constantly braced for impact, but without purpose when I am not going to war with a person, an idea, an edge, I throw myself into storm after storm, a necessary call to arms to fill me with adrenaline and bloody precision, only to lose focus and determination in the calm. In class the attempt at reaching out to explore with hungry fingertips disrupted my ability to function. Caught between a push and a reach something broke down in my sense of my self, which I had thought was limitless until I found this internal barrier, this wall of shame and fear, this place where I was not allowed to go and it took all of my body to contain the snot and the sobs that wanted to fall out of me.


In a developmental movement class this morning, watching babies roll around, and considering the different constellations created between caretakers and the infant axis they rotated around, it became clear to me that if I can only see my own troubled childhood in their little bodies and faces, than I cannot possibly see them, their individual expression of selfness. I must detangle myself from these life myths and elaborate defenses, or I won't be able to see past the colors of my experience to what actually lives inside of every creature that falls under my gaze. I don't want to wander forever in a field of my own ghosts.






"Interpreting the past is like trying to sketch a picture of the Grand Canyon from space."

Distance provides a kind of grammar.

Seated in the audience for a small dance company's showcase I had designed marketing materials for - the performances were all filled with interesting young women, except for one particular piece. A 70 year old woman, the choreographer and company's focal point moved alone, feet shifting in and out of time to delicate sounds. Like a butterfly, like a crone, halting and awkward one moment, powerful and arched the next, making shapes in the space with her body, her sharp movements, her meandering, emotional pauses, she danced as vigorously as a young woman, whatever one's taste for performance, her presence and sharp awareness were nothing to be overlooked, alone on that stage.

I was struck by both her freedom and control over the movements of her body, and thinking back to people in my life, family members, pseudo role models, teachers, adults I encounter all around me - near her age, some not even close who have lost that sense of connection with themselves. It makes me so angry sometimes, that the people I should have been able to look up to when learning what truths composed the world I exist in seem to have willfully relinquished that awareness, of self, and the space around them. That I could find deeper, more meaningful exchanges with individuals perceived through a screen, remote, unrelated to me, than when drowning deep in the clotted embrace of some of my blood relatives. That a simple movement of an aging figure against a white wall could make me want to cry for the grandmother I should have had, for what the human body could be, could have been. For the wisdom I could have drunk off of knowing individuals at the earliest formation of my own sense of self and concept of power.

Like a prayer, like flagellation, like a nightmare, I can only keep fiercely repeating to my friend walking through the cold next to me, to myself in bed that evening:

I never want to be trapped in my own body, by age or fear or disuse.

Oh god, please.