Category Archives: improvisation life

Mar3

my first eBook!

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What I have become aware of is that for many of us there is a big commute between our creative work and the rest of our lives. As It is hard to maintain a sense of living wide-awake in a body when we are so tethered to the digital world and disconnected from vibrant, physical experiencing.

I developed Breaking into Blossom:  Moving into an Improvisational Life as an online class because I wanted to offer some fresh ideas on how to close that gap from my perspective as an improvisational movement artist, a teacher and a coach.  It  is designed to inspire you to become more daring, more visionary, and more playful and improvisational in your daily life, relationships and work.

I am now offering the materials that I developed for that class in a beautifully designed eBook that contains ten chapters integrating writing, movement, guest artists and specific strategies to help you find a deeper creative engagement.

The book will be available at the end of March.  You will receive it as a downloadable pdf.

The cost is $15.  You can order it here.

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Mar2

trespass

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Yesterday I wrote about the boundaries set by others – our feral cat Mamacita, and the owners of the empty farm next door.  How there are places we cannot go, where we are not welcome.

When we lived on Martha’s Vineyard, during the off-season, we would trespass.  After the summer people evacuated at the end of the season, we  would walk on private properties, across land that was fiercely private during the tourist season.  We would joke, saying, “I am going to trespass against them.”  To me this felt like a way of weaving the forbidden lands back into the whole cloth of the island.

I have a friend with a daughter who is fiercely private.  Secretive even.  Resentful of any incursion on what she considers to be her business.  She is also a child who requires particular attention due to her learning deficits and chronic, even dangerous poor judgement.

So my friend has to dance along the thin wire of holding on and letting go.  It is not always a graceful dance.  At times she finds herself hanging by her toes, or teetering perilously close to falling.  She has found that if she can find an aperture – a space that invites entry – things go better.  Sometimes there appears to be only a wall, but if she waits, a way to enter will usually appear.

What initially seemed to be a trespass is then a meeting place.  Like the tree in the photograph above. Can you find the opening?

 

Mar1

winter farm, winter fences

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This is the farm across the street from us.  It is my favorite place to take pictures.  I love the geometry of the trees, the fences, the buildings, and the arc of Indian Mountain in the background.  When we moved here, it was busy with horses and cars and our friends rescued dogs.  Then the owners abruptly closed it down and now it sits quiet and forlorn except for a couple feral cats that we feed.

One of these, Mamacita, is the mother of Obadiah and Precious, two of her kittens that we managed to catch and adopt.  We caught her too and neutered her, but she is decidedly feral so we released her with a promise to take care of her babies and her as much as she would let us.  I went on Alley Cats and learned how to build a shelter, with fresh water outside and a warm bed inside.  We have never been able to touch her, even though she will come within a couple feet when we bring food out.

There is something about Mamacita and  the beautiful, empty farm that makes me think of the limits of our caring and of boundaries that we cannot cross.  This is not easy for me – I want to press myself into everything and gather everything to me, bring it under my emotional umbrella.  Today, I am aware of those lines that I cannot or should not cross – the places and the people that say “No further than this.”

As I write this though, I am devising ways to dance over those lines, even if just here, in my heart.

Feb29

still sitting

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Still sitting even in the snow, or maybe especially in the snow.  Sitting requires more rigor and devotion when it is cold and windy.

There are days when I do not want to do the work, when I feel that it will take too much from me, or that I do not have enough to give to it. The work could be anything:  the writing, the riding, the dancing.

I went to the barn early today to ride because a snowstorm was coming.  For me, riding is sitting.  Riding is practice.  Riding is that combination of rigor and devotion.  Today was one of those days when I did not think I had enough to give.  My body felt sore and stiff after several days of riding the big, powerful Friesian, Sanne.

At one point in the ride, I wanted to stop and say, “Wait, this is too hard, I cannot do it, I do not know how.”  In fact, I think I did stop and say something like that.  I could feel how the muscles in my arms were braced, how the pieces of my riding were not flowing together, felt I was coming apart, both mentally and physically.

Here is the thing.  It was less my body than my mind.  It was that old doubting, questioning, fearful part of my noisy mind, the part that has gotten up and left the meditation hall even when my body is still sitting there (in the saddle, holding the reins.)

Somehow I did recover myself.  Here is what I did.  I stopped trying the same old thing, and began to improvise my ride.  A circle here, a softening there, a change of direction:  change, change, change.  I shifted my attention to the stiff, unyielding parts of my body and invited suppleness there.

I think this is what it means to be a spiritual athlete.  Nurturing an athleticism that is not about big muscles or marathon sitting, but the kind of athleticism that is about endurance and steadfastness.  About finding a way in, every day.  Offering the best, every day.