Hot Hands and Mud

So today I re-shaved my head, and I love it even more. When I touch my head the heat of my hands presses into my skin and I have never felt that before. It is cool! And as for my head being cold, another comment I get regularly, well, I have to wear a hat anyway, so there's no difference in my position to old jack frost at all.

Articulating just what is so different here, where so much is actually similar, is befuddling at times. The concept that returns over and over since the first days however, is that of mud. It feels like slogging through the mud. My body is made up of crystals and clay, water sluicing through it and through my everyday, a primordial sense of dragons and of myth, and yet the people are hard in spite of it. Their oppression is like centuries old! It is possible they even feel buried. And yet glimmers of those crystals, those skeletons from the past, are abundantly apparent.
It is as if the sense of being clay is natural to the English, and for them to come to America, where we are all so airy and wonderfully cheery and lightheartedly disconnected, and in my mind so much nicer to be around..it is as if that is completely ungrounded. And for me, this sensation of slogging, it is just being down to earth and normal.
Cup o' tea anyone?

Beauty

Yesterday we visited the nearby town of Ely, rather gothic and quirky with a towering cathedral at its center. There is a lovely river walk and daffodils were dancing all over the park. As we spent some timeless time there I was reminded of the very first mission statement for Open Air Dance: To create beauty. And that we did, two hours of glory in 'Stacking Turtles'. However, as I applied for bigger and better grant funding I was confronted with the questions of beauty by what standards, in whose eyes, perceived by who, gendered or ungendered, etc. etc. Well, I did what was appropriate, creating outreach and childrens classes focused on literacy and human movement processes, letting my notions of beauty for beautys sake go, creating several more seasons of work with a more tangible and verbally conducive foci. Now that I am in graduate school and learning the theory behind all those questions, I just have to let go into myself that always held truth, and appreciate the transcendence of beauty that is. The memory of salt in the river wind, the cadence of a seagulls wings in harmony with its flock, shiny first star of evening, laughter in my childrens mouths, smiles in the eyes of strangers, golden light upon my face, and in the breast of my heart, flowers unfolding. Ahhh, that's better.
In the words of my dear friend L., "Let the beauty we love be what we do!" and "Have a magical, wonderful, uplifting day"...

What We Love

All you need is love, love, Love is all you need... It is warming up and the crocus's are blooming! Oh happy day, oh glorious Iduna, Xochtl, mama bunnies. We are finding a few ways of being that we absolutely love: for me, turning with the dervish group is filling that need for communal spirit based activity. For the family, our favorite places around Cambridge have become Grantchester meadows and the tea house there, the Parkside Community swimming pool, Norfolk Street (full of vintage shops), The Zoological Museum, and the nearby town of Ely. The kids have discovered some English videos they love: Trumpton and Chigly, claymation about English village life. Kevin loves how people are out and about shopping and chillin' even in the winter and the rain. And best of all, we love each other...through this adjustment to a new culture, a new climate, and starting all over in terms of possessions and material things we are really growing closer. For valentines Kevin and I drank a bottle of bubbly and watched The 40 Year Old Virgin...OMG! The funniest movie I have seen in a long time, and you know, I think I'm gonna like it here affterall. Thank you Gaia for those crocus, for our friends far and wide, and for the resilience of the human spirit.

Mothers Milk

Snow...Coffee shops...Cookies...Candles and Incense. As I sit here in Starbucks on this snowy day I watch people, and percieve the distinctness of our social groupings. A blonde Spanish woman sits across from me: direct, small, wild, in touch with her body. An entire group of Spanish kids is here, 20-30 of them, and they keep changing seats between them, some going out for a smoke and then others and then others. They are like Americans: easy to interact with, ready smiles, gestures that sweep across space..they remind me of home. And they are European, Spanish to their core: direct, sensual, bodily present, and I like them. I think about my study of culture/anthropology and also of how mannerism is learned. I don't know that it is place specific at all, it is too human for that. Mannerism and perception, these are definitely learned behaviour, ways of being passed down from physicality to physicality. We don't teach it outright, we simply live it, and through exchange of all those small patterns to life, we teach. Does it really take revolution to break these up? Would we go on the same ways forever if we didn't shake up our familial foundations from time to time? Maybe we go on in the same ways forever anyway! Consciousness around behaviour, awareness through movement, body talk, etc..even these methods do not have the power to change an affection for certain mannerisms, certain displays of feeling, certain ways of perception. These things are carried deep within a person. As our mother is embedded in our DNA, we are also embedded in our mothers physicality... our mother language, our mother earth, our mummy dearest :)
Love to all,

Moonshine

I just want to take a moment and give thanks for the wonderful friendship and hospitality I experienced in NC. I wish I had pictures of each one of you to put up! Since I returned one song I laugh and sing is this: Way up in NC, up in NC, there's no other place that I'd rather be...they say in Pennsylvania that the moon is shinin' bright, but I know where there's moonshinin' evry night...Way up in NC, up in NC, there's no other place that I'd rather be! Soon I will have pictures of our kitty to put up and will be immersed in scholarly thought again.
For now, my shaved head is really working :) For those who did not know, my dear NC friends helped me to go hairless and I am lovin' it...it's my declaration of my space-taking, free-thinking, tradition scorning self. It says everything I want to say without my actually saying it in words, and it is effective...I've been to a party and a show and am going out to dinner this week and another party next weekend. So, it pays to be bold...in attitude most of all. The shaved head somehow allows me to give myself the freedom that I want.
Have you roared today?? Much Love,

Meow Meow

Isabella is home! How wonderful, to be cuddled with so deeply by our pet...she lays down next to my belly and purrs so that my organs vibrate, she throws her front leg across my lap and holds me, she waits at the top of the stairs to tap me on the shoulder when I walk by, what a dear! We have had snow this week, and she goes out, sniffs and purrs and makes her footprints, and runs back in. She had not been outside in over two months when I picked her up and her delight at the privilege is immense. The kids play hide and seek with her and all three of them curl up for a bedtime story, so this life back in our home is such a joy.

As for re-integrating, I realize that the importance of visits and vacations is that they throw a wrench in our routine and help us to break out of it. My old tools, they have been wonderful, and I will use them at liberty, but maybe I need some new tools too? Like getting a radio and listening to the BBC, like looking for a rental in the villages outside town, like creating my own groups that meet in my own home. And I'm on it! And I laugh at myself too, nothing is really that bad, just unfamiliar, and is it ever really comfortable to create a new song? The pentatonic sounds strange....
Meow Meow,

Kingston Town

As I sit here in the Baltimore Airport (Jan 29th) I am again impressed by the light and glass and modern spaciousness-the angles and silver and impersonal clean-the sense of uncluttered efficiency. It is glittery, and I begin to understand at a deeper level how the world around us is shaped by our cumulative mass vibration-how the look, feel, taste, smell, and sense of our spaces are created via the step down process of manifestation...right now, we are really turned on by our sleekness, our streaming toward more and more light beingness. We are not yet fully aware of our truly interdependent nature...we are, however, aware enough to be creating movement in this direction...

During this trip I am made unexpectedly, and painfully, cognizant of a vibration more fundamental to reality in the spaces of the country. In the city - I exist in my head and and my light eyes - in the country I drop in and down and become the angels and faeries themselves. There is no separation, the veil is the most thin among the mud and bugs.
My pain at living in the city, the city of Cambridge, the city of London, is immense. I have lost sight of my light self, my faery soul, my angel wings, and succumbed to the restraint of small spaces and small minds. I want to be my full beacon here - to continue in my own fiery manifestation - and so I will remind myself with all of the old tools: 100 day gong, songs, movement practice, presence. If I am raw then so be it-I must not fall asleep again!
As my dear dear friends I ask that you remind me of who I am am, sing me some songs, and possibly mail me some dirt too, that I may make mud and cover my body and experience the thinness of our illusion from own city bathroom. Know that I am singing also for you:)

Courage is not being a super hero, it is simply showing up to everyday as ones true self. I can do that!