Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

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?

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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.

Aug17

wedding questions

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This is the wedding day of my daughter Bimala and her fiance Jeff.  I thought that the week would be more out of control, more crazy.  Instead the pieces of the big jigsaw seem to be floating together – not always effortlessly, but bumping and slipping their way into place, making a picture that is both sun and shadow, light and dark.

The shadow/dark parts are the unknown places.  The things that scare mommies, like how will this work?  Will the baby be ok?  Are they ready for primetime? Can they handle this big life-sized assignment that they have taken on?  So far the answers are yes and no and maybe.

The sun parts are what we see and know and hold right now. Each other.  The moment.  Our best intentions.  Our love. And that is enough for now.

 

 

Aug16

Garrison & Polly: the poetry angels

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Sedona by Paula Josa-Jones

This poem came to me from my friend Polly Styron, who has been following my wedding travails (travels?).  It came to her from the lovely Garrison Keillor – a poetry archangel.  It is EXACTLY what I needed to read today.

Prayer for What is Lost

by Stuart Kestenbaum

We are moving forward
or in some direction up,
down, east, west, to the side,
down the canyon walls,
watching the light fall
on the cliffs, which makes
the light seem ancient because
the red stone is hundreds
of millions of years old,
but the light is from today,
it is what the plants are moving
out of the earth to meet,
it heats the air that lifts the birds
that float and hover
over what is made from now.

“Prayer for What is Lost” by Stuart Kestenbaum, from Prayers & Run-On Sentances. © Deerbrook Editions, 2007. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)