Category Archives: improvisation life

May8

closer to home

Posted on by

Today was the first day that we went out and actually looked at houses.  We think that we may have found something.  Our new nest, our Wild Rose Farm or maybe Red Barn Farm.  It is substantially smaller than where we are now and needs some serious work and studio work space built for both of us, but there is something quite magical about it, a feeling that this place is close to, or maybe even is, what we are hoping to find.

As I have been thinking about this move and dreaming my way into the  change, the word “closer” keeps coming up.  I am not sure what it means.  This house is in fact farther from the horses, farther from a lot of the places we love, like Rhinebeck, New York.   The closer that I am feeling has to do with a certain kind of cosiness, a physical closeness that can escape us in a bigger house.  I think I am also looking for a sense of authenticity.  Again, I am not sure what that means.  A place that feels grounded, rooted, earthed.

Home is important to me.  I know that there is a current fascination with a nomadic, AirBNB existence.  That holds no interest for me.  Maybe it is that I have absolutely no air in  my astrological chart.  I need the grounding and the holding of my home.  I have kids.  I have animals.  I want my nest.  What that nest looks like has mostly been pretty expansive.  So moving into a very small, very old yet charming house would be a big, strange change.  And yet. . .

So today feels as if it has brought us closer to the next step, closer to an acceptance of that step, and closer to a picture of the future.  Every move that we have made in the past has been driven by a certain necessity.  And I don’t mean having to move, but rather being moved to move by a sense of where life was carrying us and being willing to follow that current.

Here is something I learned from Abraham about current.  You can swim very hard upstream, battle against the current (I did that a lot when I was younger and more foolish) but that current will carry you downstream anyway.  Upstream is the past.  Downstream is the future.  Might as well let yourself be carried.

SHARE & EMAIL
May6

horse dancing

Posted on by

Sarah playing with her miniature horse, Chub

On Saturday  we visited Sarah Hollis of Tintagel Andalusians in Westhampton, MA.  Sarah is the owner of Escorial, the beautifully trained liberty horse that we have performed with for the past six years.  She is also the most extraordinary, visionary and talented horse person I know.

Sarah, like many of us, is at an interesting, challenging crossroads with her work, due in part to the wild economic weather of the past four years.  But here is the thing that I am seeing with myself and Sarah and a number of other friends.

The terror and the struggle has birthed a lot of new enterprise and imagination.  I launched a blog, wrote a book, made new performance work and am about to launch a new website with a host of new offerings – teaching, coaching, writing, performance.  Sarah is looking at the whole landscape of her work and digging deeper into her greatest passions:  teaching and training.  We are both looking to move in order to get ourselves closer to what will nourish us best.

Pam and I were talking to Jon Katz on Friday, and I said that I had recently gotten a blog post from Seth Godin about catastrophizing.  Over the past few years I have gotten the feeling that I am hard-wired to catastrophize.  That it is my nature  It is who I am.  Jon said that he sees this tendency in our economics and politics and personal lives as a failure of imagination.  He is absolutely right.  When i am in a state of terror, I cannot imagine or create anything.

I know this from my work with horses as well.  When a horse is afraid, they cannot learn.  They cannot do anything but flee or fight.  That is why the positive reinforcement training strategies work so beautifully.  They open space for communication, calming, relaxation, breathing.

I said earlier that the terror and struggle had birthed new enterprise.  That is not exactly right.  Before I could see my way to new creative endeavors, I had to do a lot of that calming, breathing work first. Sometimes I had to do it every minute or even every breath.  I had to use a lot of different strategies, because if yoga or walking worked one day, it might be ineffective the next.

The point is that I have figured out some ways to stay, as Abraham says, “in the vortex,” or in a state of feeling good pretty much of the time.  When the big rogue wave rises, I can duck dive and let it go by most of the time.  I feel good about that.

This week Pam and I are going out to look at some properties.  Leaning forward into whatever is to come next.  We have a tentative name for our new home:  Wild Rose Farm.  It has a feeling of something old, something growing, something blooming, something wild.  It has the feeling of home.

May4

travels with hazel

Posted on by

Hazel and Ryder with props of alpaca fur and guinea hen feathers under construction.

Yesterday Ryder Cooley and I went into New York City to meet with booking agent Jodi Kaplan.  Ryder takes the Hudson train and I take the Metro North so when we met at Sarahbeth’s  and Hazel (on the left) was also seated at the table, I knew it would be a different kind of day in the city.

Hazel is the taxidermied head of a black-bellied sheep* from Barbados.  At least that is what her mounting plaque said when Ryder found her.  Today she wears two  backpack-like straps at the base of her neck and is worn by Ryder in one of her performance art pieces.  Hazel had come to the city with Ryder in search of a bag so that Hazel could travel as a carry-on when they go to California to perform.

I suggested FEDEX, but Ryder felt that it would be strange to ship her collaborator.  I think it would be easier, but it is not my piece.

The real story is really what it is like to walk down the street in New York carrying the head of a sheep. I would have to say that I saw a greater range of human expression in those 25 minutes that I do in most months.  Puzzlement. Horror.  Fear.  Amusement.  Curiosity.  Confusion.  Anger.  Incredulity.  The list goes on.

And here is the really interesting part.  They all acted as if Hazel was actually alive.  Ryder carried her like a baby on her hip with a sling, so there was this disconcerting animating effect from her movement.  But people did not seem to see her as partial.  As just a head.  They spoke about her as if she were walking with us, or about to sprout legs and move on her own.

Except for dogs, people in New York are not really exposed to animals on the streets.  Hazel seemed to touch something – a kind of primal curiosity or yearning or fear that comes from seeing something entirely out of your context suddenly in it.  I like that.  It didn’t feel like walking with Hazel was exhibitionist or in-your-face.  Ryder is completely cool and easy with her taxidermied collaborators, and I think that is almost as disconcerting to people as the creature itself.

Apparently taxidermied animals are not on the forbidden list for the TSA.  I will keep you posted on Hazel’s progress to California.

*note:  I have since discovered that Hazel is actually a ram, perhaps Henry.  It may be that because both Ryder and I are doing performance work that challenges gender stereotypes, that s/he will remain Hazel.