Monthly Archives: August 2012

Aug24

duty or devotion?

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Last Wednesday I was starting out my day to visit and work with the stallion Nelson and then go to the barn to ride my two boys, Capprichio and Sanne.  Then back to the house to write my blog and work on a chapter of my book that reads like a leaky boat.  Then walk the dogs and fix dinner, and then maybe more writing.

The problem was not the things I was doing, but the way I felt when I woke up.  It all felt like duty – things that had to be done, checked off and completed.  There wasn’t any joy in it, even though individually, each of those tasks are pretty fun.  I felt overwhelmed.

The real reason that I am doing each of those things because they are about joy, devotion and part of a practice, like sitting or yoga.  The feeling of duty that I had was leeching out the joy, eroding the quality of devotion and care and pleasure.  Almost like there was “duty mold” obscuring the shape and nature of my day.

Pam, who is a brilliant life coach, suggested that I just hold that image and awareness as I went about my day.  So I did that, and what I noticed was that when I was in it – in the stall brushing Nelson, riding Capprichio, writing the blog, that it didn’t feel dutiful, or at least not nearly as much as when I looked at the whole day laid out before me.

Aha!  so it is a problem of mind and orientation and a problem of not being in the moment.  I remember when I first got sober, that my wonderful sponsor, Bo, would tell me that sometimes it was just about staying sober one moment at a time.  Forget about one day at a time – that was too much.

So it is like that now too.  One thing at a time.  When I am in it it isn’t such a problem.  When I am standing outside of it, or trying to climb the whole wall of it, that is when it feels like duty.

This reminds me of The Golden Compass, which I am listening to now as I drive from one place to another.  Each of the humans in the book has what is called a daemon – a creature in animal form that thinks and feels what they are thinking and feeling – like a psychic twin.  To be separated from one’s daemon is the most hideous and unthinkable thing possible.

I think that to be separated from the joy and the devotion of the moment is like that – a severing from what is most precious and essential.

Where is your devotion?

 

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Aug24

I want to graze

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I have not had much time to graze lately.  Now it is the end of summer, the cicadas are louder each day, the birches are salted with yellow, the beetlebung has little sprouts of burgundy at the tips of its branches and the gardens are looking fallish.  I want to graze.  I want to stretch out in the sun and let the earth soak me in and let myself be soothed.

It is time to return to some creative projects that have been waiting, dusty and patient, for me to return.  I have in mind some new offerings, including a horse dancing teleseminar, a short ebook on horse dancing for non-horse folks, and a workshop called Move! Write! Move! that I am planning with the wonderful word coach and performer, Carol Burnes.

Stay tuned!

 

 

Aug22

on not commuting to the dance

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I love this story of how dancer and choreographer  Remy Charlip discovered the secret of dancing every part of his day.  It’s in the first three minutes.  Check it out.

What I love is how he makes dancing an inevitable, inextricable, essential part of every day.  I want that.  In her blog,  Pam White asked what you would do no matter what.  My first and most real answer would be move, to dance, to play in the garden of my body – let it bloom/explode/ooze out in strange and wonderful ways in shape, gesture,  story, time and space.

Jenna Wogenrich asks us to write down what we want.  I want to always hold the spirit and the impulse for dance in my hand, my heart, my mind, so that a moment’s notice, I can take flight, I can bloom into movement, be swept up in a current of unexpected wildness.  I want to always feel like moving,  to open to what is arising in my body.  I want to do this out loud, quiet and soft, here and there, with you watching, with no one watching.  Everywhere.  All the time.

I want to dance every part of my day.  What about you?

Aug20

we stand together

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I love this photo.  Here we all are:  black, white, Nepali, male, female, gay, straight, young, old.  This was taken by our dear friend and godfather of our girls, Derrill Bazzy, just after the wedding of my daughter Bimala to her new husband, Jeff.  Also here are Chandrika, sister of the bride, and Chaz, brother of the groom, and my beloved wife, Pam White.  Lots more pictures on Facebook.

It was a beautiful day.  A gathering of the tribe:   friends and family from Chicago, Minnesota, Martha’s Vineyard and all parts of the Northeast.

The real journey for our family has been the time travel that took place from Father’s Day, when we found out that Bimala was pregnant, til Saturday, when we all came together to celebrate the beginning of their life together.  That journey has been a lot like the trek that Pam and I did in Nepal in 1986.  Landslides, bedbugs, blisters, leeches, altitude sickness, views of impossible beauty, moments of intense quiet and meditation – the ultimate traveling improvisation and circus.  Harrowing and exquisite, sometimes in the exact same moment.

These past 70 days have been like that.  We have grown closer and more real – skin horse real – in that time. We are all worn smoother, polished, opened and restitched, and ultimately softer and more cuddly.

During the ceremony, Jo-Ann Eccher, wife of Derrill and godmother of the girls, spoke of spiritual education, or the gathering of all of the angels, and archangels, and the presence of Mary in all of her guises.  I am not a religious person, but I am a spiritual one.  And I wanted them all there, for Bimala and Jeff, and for all of us.