Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

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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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?

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)