Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Oct16

in transit

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moving-day

We are moving.  In the thick of sifting, culling, releasing, saving, organizing, packing, unpacking.  We are between two houses – straddling.  It is awkward and at the same time exhilarating.  We have known this was coming for a long time.

Actually, when we moved from Martha’s Vineyard, it took more than one tractor trailer to move us.  Stuff had to be ferried down our narrow sand road (between two wetlands) out onto the main road to the BIG TRUCK.  Then ferried across the Vineyard Sound and Massachusetts to the farthest edge of Connecticut.  I started culling then, but things have a way of coming in the door and piling up nonetheless.

This move should feel simple by comparison. In some ways it does.  We know the area.  We have the luxury of moving over the period of a month.  However, we are leaving a house that is full of memory and feeling: our daughters, our granddaughter, and the many animals who have left us  -Pachi, Abijah, Gordita, Jules, Liam, Nikita.  A wedding, our civil ceremony that had to happen when we moved.  Dances that have been made here, art that has been created.  New directions in work and love.

At the new house, yesterday they spray foamed what will be my new movement studio.  Our contractor managed to save the beautiful mahogany floor that was there so we can reuse it.  Pam’s studio is plumbed.  The dog fence is going up.  My Aunt Pearl’s peonies from Sioux Falls have been transplanted.  Very soon we will all transit:  Cho, Guinnie, Hentri, Sadie Mae, Eli, Mamacita, Maggie, Talullah, Precious, Bella, Ivy, Pam and Paula.  Waving goodbye, waving hello.

 

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Sep27

watch this dance!

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276-Anna-Halprin

I have been savoring the posts from the Tamalpa Institute in celebration of Anna Halprin’s 95th birthday. This is one of the dances presented during the festivities. It is exquisite. Dohee Lee has staged her interpretation of “The Prophetess,” originally created by Anna in 1948. Watch through to the end – it moved me to tears.

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Here is Anna in the original version!

Sep14

Nikita

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANiki at work.            Photo:  Pam White

On Saturday, our beloved cat Nikita passed. He had been with us for 18 years. Niki’s story is a good one.

My dance company and I were performing in St. Petersburg, Russia.  One evening, Pam and I were walking in the city – it was summer, and the evening light stretched into the early hours of the morning.  We strolled across the Anichkov bridge, where several people stood with boxes of kittens.  In one of the boxes was a tiny sickly kitten with a spot on his nose.  We were flying out the next day.  We tried to find a cat carrier.  We tried to find a vet.  No luck.  We went to the airport, and sitting in the waiting area was a family with a tiny kitten in a carrier.  “We should have taken him,” I whispered.  “We have to find a way.”

Back in the U.S., I called Helen, our Russian translator and described the kitten.  She found him.  She found a carrier.  She found a vet.  Several Americans were still in Moscow after the dance festival.  Lisa First, the director of the festival agreed to fly the kitten from Moscow to New York.  Helen agreed to fly him from St. Petersburg to Moscow.  We flew from Martha’s Vineyard to rendezvous with Lisa at JFK.  In our last conversation with Helen, she asked if we would take another kitten from a kitten club. Her name was Musia.  Helen had adopted her sister Dusia.  We said sure.  In for a dime. . .

Here is where it gets even more bizarre.  Our plane couldn’t land in New York – air traffic.  We circled over JFK.  I stared down at the airport willing the plane to land.  I knew that Lisa had a very narrow window of time before she had to catch her flight from New York to Minneapolis.  Finally we landed.  I raced through the airport down to the area where Lisa was waiting.  Couldn’t find her.  Finally spotted her across a very crowded room.  She handed me the carrier with a smile, and I started running through the airport.

Our flight back to the Vineyard was scheduled to leave in five minutes.  As I ran, I could see little black and white paws stretching through the carrier.  Musia.  I reached security (fortunately nothing like post 9/11 security).  The security x-ray was broken.  I pleaded.  They relented.  I ran.  Pam was standing in the doorway of the airplane.  All the stewardesses stood behind her looking worried.  Pam said later that they were going to hold the plane no matter what.  Musia, Nikita, Pam and I took our seats.

Musia passed two years ago.  She was an extravagantly beautiful, completely sweet Russian beauty. Niki stayed on.  His job after our daughters left was to sleep between us so that whenever we awoke, we would hear his purr, rest our hands on him.  His other job was to teach us how to be a part of everything, how to dissolve into the day, the moment, how to receive, how to taste everything all of the time.  He taught us that up until his last breath.

Thank you Nikita.

Sep8

a beautiful read

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I have just finished reading Waves in Deep Still Water: Listening for Mind by Candace Crosby.  I met Candace this summer at the Body-Mind Centering Association conference in Portland, Oregon.  “May I join you,” at lunch opened out into shared stories, including the one that is the heart of her beautiful book.

For over ten years, Candace worked with Christi, a young woman who had suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury as a result of a car accident.  With Christi’s  parents and a devoted team of medical and alternative practitioners, Candace brought her empathetic skills, her curiosity and heart to the mystery of helping Christi trace a path back into the world.  This is not a story with a simple ending.

It is Christi’s story, but also Candace’s.  With great vulnerability, she traces her own questions and fears about the direction and shape of her work.  Her process of opening and discovery is a parallel journey to Christi’s.  This book is an important part of the conversation about vulnerability and healing. The title captures beautifully the need for dropping deep to feel the subtle movement that arises from the apparent stillness where all of the usual signs and markers are absent or only faintly felt.