Category Archives: improvisation life

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)

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Aug15

what do you want?

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Wild Blue Sky by Pam White

On August 13, Jenna Wogenrich challenged her readers to write down what they want.  She said to write it down, print it and carry it with you.  (You should read the whole of this blogpost!)  So far, 71 people have left  comments, each one more poignant, passionate and delicious than the next.  I took her up on the invitation.  Here’s what I wrote:

I want to sell my current home and move into one that feels right-sized for our work and our lives together, a place that has splendid views, some land – a place where I can bring my horses home when they retire. I want to feel financially free, light and abundant. I want to spread my work with horses and humans far and wide, to publish my book, to help people find their own creative and playful selves through movement and animals. I want to spend at least 6 weeks a year by the sea. I want to engage, connect and love everywhere, every moment.    

And then, as if the universe was listening (it is), here is what came to my inbox from Abraham today:

Law of Attraction abounds, and when it is said to you, “Ask, and it is given,” there is no more powerful statement that is at the basis of what makes things happen than that. Now, how is it that you think you ask? With your words? The Universe doesn’t hear your words. You ask with your desire. The desire that is born out of the contrast. That desire. That wanting. That’s what summons the Life Force.

What do you want?  Tell Jenna, tell me.

Aug10

1-2-3 LEAP!!!

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Newick Photography:  from left, Tony, Sammy, Scott, Alexis

Pam and I attended a wedding on Martha’s Vineyard in mid-July.  It was a double wedding of Alexis Iamarinno- a former student of mine and the one that is airborne above – her fiance Scott and her brother Tony and his fiance Sammy.  They just sent me a link to some gorgeous photographs.

Their wedding was a true Vineyard event.  A resounding gathering of the island community who have seen Alexis and her brother grow from infancy to beautiful adulthood.  I am posting a few photos on Facebook because they so wonderfully capture the richness and spirit of the island community.

But back to the leap.  Next weekend, my daughter will leap.  She is marrying the father of her coming child.  Actually, we (her family and her friends) are all leaping.  Leaps of faith, leaps of joy, hopeful leaps, tentative leaps, wild leaps.

I am a dancer.  I remember when I first discovered that I could soar.  It was in a jazz class taught by my mentor and beloved teacher, Charles Moore.  Charles danced for joy and you could not be in his classes without being infected by the pure sensual, playful, ravenously gorgeous feeling for movement that he shared with us.  On that day we were leaping – sailing across the floor one after the other – and all of a sudden I was flying out of my mind – higher than I had ever flown – a leap of faith, a prayer in the air.

My intention for my daughter’s upcoming wedding is that I leap, that my heart fly open and wide with love, with hope, with joy.

 

Aug5

tender

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We (my family) are all feeling tender, but having trouble being tender.  Not a good combination.  Compounded and complicated by a wicked Mercury retrograde.

Yesterday my daughter and I sparked, flamed.  Both of us got scorched.  Tender.  Today the baby kicked for the first time.  Another tender moment.

There is this:  touching over and over the tender edges of my relationship with my daughter, I am learning something new.  About letting go.  About acceptance, about the necessity of an open heart and hand.

Some days I do not want to have such a big learning curve.  I want it to be finished, this painful growing, these tender, ouchy moments.  Other days I am glad to be challenged, glad to find new ways to come back into alignment, to be like an anemone, snatching its arms back in, then blooming out into love again and again.