Monthly Archives: February 2012

still sitting

Still sitting even in the snow, or maybe especially in the snow.  Sitting requires more rigor and devotion when it is cold and windy.

There are days when I do not want to do the work, when I feel that it will take too much from me, or that I do not have enough to give to it. The work could be anything:  the writing, the riding, the dancing.

I went to the barn early today to ride because a snowstorm was coming.  For me, riding is sitting.  Riding is practice.  Riding is that combination of rigor and devotion.  Today was one of those days when I did not think I had enough to give.  My body felt sore and stiff after several days of riding the big, powerful Friesian, Sanne.

At one point in the ride, I wanted to stop and say, “Wait, this is too hard, I cannot do it, I do not know how.”  In fact, I think I did stop and say something like that.  I could feel how the muscles in my arms were braced, how the pieces of my riding were not flowing together, felt I was coming apart, both mentally and physically.

Here is the thing.  It was less my body than my mind.  It was that old doubting, questioning, fearful part of my noisy mind, the part that has gotten up and left the meditation hall even when my body is still sitting there (in the saddle, holding the reins.)

Somehow I did recover myself.  Here is what I did.  I stopped trying the same old thing, and began to improvise my ride.  A circle here, a softening there, a change of direction:  change, change, change.  I shifted my attention to the stiff, unyielding parts of my body and invited suppleness there.

I think this is what it means to be a spiritual athlete.  Nurturing an athleticism that is not about big muscles or marathon sitting, but the kind of athleticism that is about endurance and steadfastness.  About finding a way in, every day.  Offering the best, every day.

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through the looking glass

Only after this was downloaded from my camera into iPhoto could I see the world in her eye.  The photographer, the line of field and sky –  the mirror of her eye holding it all.

I don’t think that we really look, most of the time.  There is a meditation called gazing that I have practiced a number of times.  Two people sit face-to-face and gaze into each others’ eyes for five or so minutes.  There is the first nervousness, the twitchy, uncomfortable feeling of being seen, of being naked in a close-up way.  Self-conscious giggles.  At some point there may be a calm, or maybe not.

I am aware of how much of my life is scanning – a minimal taking-in of what I see.  A surface tour.  Not very often sinking into the depths, or awakening the peripheral.  The visual sense is so predominant, and yet so often (for me at least) lacking in detail.

I think that is one of the reasons that I love the camera.  It takes me in and let’s me stay.  Gazing, rapt, voracious even. Framing, capturing, dancing with it – my landscape partners, my subjects.

How do you see?

what he sees

A lot of times I will just stand with Nelson and look where he is looking.  I want to know more about his point of view, what is interesting to him, and what he sees.

I never really know.  But that is the point.  We cannot know what another sees or feels unless they tell us directly.  We make assumptions (which are fictions) and then pursue a course of action or inaction based on those assumptions.  More fiction.

When I am with Nelson, I don’t pretend to know what is interesting to him, or how he sees the world.  Sometimes he will be very clear in horse language (movement).  A spook generally means something was scary.  Coming close means that he feels safe or he wants a treat or both.

I like that things with Nelson are very basic.  I spend a great deal of time complicating and elaborating in many other parts of my life.  Being with the horses is a chance to step away from all of that, to get clear, and have a conversation in the language of skin, muscle and bone.  And heart, and heart.

falling

I took this photograph after the recent light snow.  When I looked at it, I felt a bit queasy – the orientation to gravity, light and the lines of the tree were disconcerting.  I felt myself falling. Falling from what, I wondered?

In recent weeks, I have felt my orientation shifting as I move into some new work.  It started with my morning 750, which I now write in Scrivener.  I began writing, and a piece of fiction (a short story perhaps?) emerged.  I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland, falling falling falling into the well of this piece.  As if I was taking dictation.   I loved the story and wondered where it was going.  I still don’t know. I have no plan.

When I was in the third grade, my family lived in London.  Part of what we did in school was to write stories.  My teacher, Miss Sherman, loved my writing and encouraged me.  I felt a sense of pride and excitement.  But when we moved back to South St. Paul, my teachers were not interested in writing.  They like penmanship and numbers.  I put the writing away, could not hold the thread of it.  It went underground with the rest of me.

Later, my writing became stodgy and correct.  Dead.  Nothing kills the writing spirit like grant proposals.  And so now, starting right here, every day, I am recovering my writing self.  Recovering myself.

I have had an offering called The Journal (and the deep end) for some time.  I knew that this new writing didn’t fit that old description.  So I changed it to Little Fictions and Ragged Memoirs.  I like this title – the openness and possibility that it holds.

It is a subscription, which means that it is one of the ways that I support myself as a writer.  It also helps give me the resources to make dances.  You see, I don’t write grants anymore.

It has come to my attention however, that many find it hard to pay for a subscription at $20 a month.  I hear you.  I am lowering the cost of the subscription to $13 a month.  I like the number.  It feels lucky. (If you are already signed up, your subscription price will lower.)

If you sign up now, I will send you the first two episodes of the story that I am writing now so you will be up to date.  As always, you can unsubscribe at any time.  If you would like to try it, you can sign up here.