Songs of Community

Here I am at a conference for ethnochoreology in Trondheim, Norway, next to 63 students and a handful of professors from all over Europe. We are the ones preserving dances, recording them, writing about them, and reviving them within our various disciplines of ethnomusicology, anthropology, folklore studies, and dance studies. Our common thread is the practice of ethnography as a research methodology. We are a weird and beautiful lot. Tonight in the hostel there is a group of Lithuanians singing in the kitchen, French are waltzing in the hallways, Greeks are playing their type of Ukele in the common room, and the sun is gazing at me through floor to ceiling windows in a 2 hours sunset of fuschia and turquiose. I am happy again. Today I danced the Hals from Eastern Turkey, observed the group dancing a Chezk round from the 1890's, and hotly debated notions of authenticiy and preservation. Yesterday I danced Norwegian round dances and sang old ritual chants from Lithuania. Tomorrow I will dance to Irish tunes and the next day something else. Spring into summer, the days are long, the rhythms are winding and circuitous, the energy is free and flowing. This is in direct conrast to the hard cold edges of winter, and I have never embodied such a stark contrast in relationship to the seasons before. At 10pm, with the last streaks of the sun finally giving way to deeper blues, I sing for the love of community and all of our songs with all of my being.
Peace,

Streaming the Field

Something about pushing boundaries excites me...up at 2am writing term papers, rockin' out to my fave songs, getting ready to go to Norway for 10 days, pushing the physical-like making a dance-like making love-like grounded patience with children-like performing our lives in their many turns, it does me good. Dogwoods in bloom today, tulips splashing puddles of color all over the park, giggly gangly people. Aurora has somehow tricked the cat into behaving like a baby doll and Isabella is wearing baby dresses and meowing sweetly as she is pushed around in a carriage! Had a long conversation with Kaiah's dad and it feels for the first time like a team effort to keep that boy on track. Blessings abound, and further blessing emerge within my writing.
Diedre Sklar did something radical in the early 90's, she wrote from her body. There were others, but Deidre insisted that her writing is an embrace: "words need to be irresistible, to partner bodily experience at all its levels of intensity, intimacy, and multiplicity...One feels the meaning of words, as movement, rhythm, texture, shape, vitality...words become the word, creating what they name...words are sacred". Here I am, encouraged to revise my relationship with language and allow it to pour out of me in much the same way as the early feminists, as the poets of all ages, as the children do. Creating a field of experience and discourse, negotiating the sacred space between all beings, laughing and crying at once because the moment is so full, I'll hang with that.
Thanks for all your prayers. Many Blessings Right Back At Ya.

First Linens

Well the first laundry to hang on the line is out today. We planted dahlia bulbs and had a snack of fresh parsley, spinach, mint, sage, thyme, rosemary, and lavendar complemented by Dutch greenhouse strawberries. Folded under the daffodils and welcomed the viney shoots of ornamental peas. There is nothing like dirt under the fingernails and in between the toes in spring!
~Many Blessings~

Duck Eggs

Happy Happy Easter! There are masses of daffodils, daisys, carnations, tulips, and mums in the gardens about town, and in vases in my little home. Chocolate eggs the size of a small cat are the thing to gather for the big day here, and there are lovely designs on some of them. I personally went for an organic Green and Black one, so I know the choclate will be good to eat. Decorating boiled eggs does not seem to be a tradition here at all though. The eggs are brown, and we cycled to several supermarkets looking for white eggs, when we finally just bought duck eggs! I have never sen duck eggs before, and it feels a little weird to boil them...however, they are very white, and large, and make lovely canvases for decoration. With crayons and food dye and vinegar we made gorgeous shades of purples, greens, yellows, blues, and reds all underlayed with flowers, spider webs, dancing people, and the like. Our German colleagues have flown back to Germany, where they will have public bonfires and much feasting and drinking. Today, I get my family out to the sea, though it may rain on us, I need to hear the ocean and wash away my grief, to allow joy to come into the cracks of my relationship with Kaiah. More and more of late, I am happy that we are here, and okay with holding the contradictions that being here symbolises for me and my family. If winter solstice is the time of new birth, and spring equinox when we sit up, then I suppose right now we are all rocking back forth on our knees and learning to crawl. Many happy returns of the day!

Oh Mother

Find Yourself a River
find yourself river
follow it with your eyes
stay silent, unmoving
watch, listen, wait
the river will name your lost lovers
and all the sweet moments you’ve collected
and the sad moments waiting for death
and the times you were ugly and evil,
and the times you were beautiful and brave
and every dream you had
every nightmare, every rapture
in the river
in the river
they will flow, they will flow
named and forgotten
named and forgotten
when you are gone
your myths will follow
you down the river
your touchstones,
your sacred rites
what kept you sane
what drove you mad
ashes and dust
scattered like a river
named and forgotten
flowing back forever

(c) 2006 J.L. Stanley

Oh Mother carry me, a child I will always be, Oh Mother carry me, down to the sea...
I love you NC, I love you my teenage son, I love you greatness in England, oh confounded paradox that seeks resolution! Without knowing why, please say a prayer for that boy..

Muted Blue

Today I reflect on the blue of the voice, the throat chakra, the human condition of feeling caged up, of needing initiation, of lacking appropriate channels for vocalizing change and creating healthy growth. I am thinking of my teenager and of the G20 protests in London. I am thinking of the recent Shout Out against rape and violence in North Carolina. I am thinking of the teenagers at Montebello High School in California, who hung the Mexican flag on the school pole with the American flag below it, upside down. I am thinking of Maya Angelou. They all want/need/desire desperately to have a voice, to be noticed, to be heard. They want the bird of the heart to fly free from its cage, to accept injustice in the world and still find beauty. They don't know how to get that freedom, how to articulate their need.

Everybody wants to blame, to say that protests don't work, to hide the lower classes on the edges of our towns, to say that she deserved it because she dresses a certain way. Well it's about time we just stopped and listened! All the human needs is safety and a listening ear to shift. And initiation, our teenage boys and our teenage girls deserve to have a safe pathway into adulthood. Our immigrants deserve to have a formal voice in their longings and their destinies. Our earths stewards deserve to be taken into the summit and given a proper forum.

I may be dreamy and outer spacey at times, and it because I have fought hard to free the bird within my breast. Injustice does not disappear, it is the weed within the flower arrangement, and it needs a continual voice. That voice gives way to a song eventually. And then and only then does harmony become remotely possible. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it is inconvenient. Yes, we must say yes, and quietly listen to those dissonant moans. They are the bird song.

Reframing Love

My cat and I are ridiculously close...at night, when I am sitting in the huge red chair in the children's room, being present while they drift to sleep, Isabella and I heal each other. She stretches her front leg out and holds me, I massage her or hold energy points, and sometimes we focus our minds together towards a feeling, sound, or sensation. It is a place of free love.

My lover and I are fantastically different...today, as we sat on a bench by the Cam River soaking up sun, I drifted into dreams soothed by the coo of a mourning dove, ripples of water, the snap of a tourist shutter, drone of buses...he drifted to thoughts of his experiments, the mechanics of cells under differing types of stress, to his lab. There we are, in this moment and in many others, sharing them and experiencing them completely differently. This never ceases to amaze.

My place on this planet and my imagination are at odds...as the melody of a sweet and gentle street musician sounded in my ears, I looked across the market and a flock of pigeons pulled a waving ribbon on their wings...I cried, standing there in the market surrounded by the rhythmic click of shoppers shoes, to be so alone in my view of the pigeons. Processing this move by creating, re-creating, letting go, going again, has heightened my outer sensibilities so that the world around me is like to a baby. It is love, in a new frame.