Surrendering into Tui Na

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I have had to let go.  I'm still working (isn't it ironic?) at it.  It's happening all the time, at every spilt of a second: seeing, loving, and letting go. 

Practicing meditation is just that.  It's practicing Life, which might be just that. (? - In this question mark there is probably some form of grasping...)
These days, the theme seems especially highlighted.  It has to do with my imminent departure from the beloved Bay Area/ West Coast.
There is all my stuff, for one thing.
These are the material possessions I believed were important to accumulate and keep around at one point.  Now I have to sort it out, and let go.  I've been purging my room slowly.  I feel an urge to live in an empty room for a while before I depart.  As if I needed to transition gradually into emptiness.
While my old friends are buying property and setting up careers, I feel like am shedding my skin once more.  I'm twenty-eight and I don't own much.  The only things I cannot quite let go of are my books (and that's quite telling of the way I'm attached to the intellect).
Most emotionally charged, still, is the idea leaving my wonderful friends behind.  They have been around over the past five years, inspiring and witnessing me as I've grown into the self I have become, and vice versa.  Together we have shared a lot of of hopes and visions.  'Cuz that's what we're here to do!

And there is little Claire.  She's three and a half now and she sometimes tells me "I love you forever" out of nowhere.  I have held her in my arms since before she could hold her own head up.  I have sang her the same French songs.  She knows my heartbeat, and the energies of our bodies are "familial".  Sometimes I find it so difficult to remain present with her.  Sometimes I get bored, or frustrated.  Often I feel helpless.  But with a smile or one of her clever remarks, she flips my heart around and makes the whole world shine with love.
How will I let go of that?




My upcoming adventures are so much about faith.  It is a pilgrimage of sorts.  I want to reside in my heart and listen to my creative flow.  I pray that the universe will provide.

Sometimes I get scared.  I see my friends partnering up with their significant other, projecting into the next ten years, even piling up for retirement.  I envy them, because they seem to have a security, net.

Sometimes I wonder what it is about my ... living from such a metaphysical place.  Isn't the physical realm just as significant?  One day, I might need someone to bring me chicken soup.  One day, I might fall in the shower, and being alone could be tragic.  I enjoy my freedom very much, but sometimes I get a bit nervous about the aloneness it seems to entail.

How much of this existential fear is actually, ultimately, warranted?  Gautama the Buddha gave us the Four Noble Truths and through them a formula to find en-light-enment.  Non-attachment is the answer.  The fears and the hopes belong in the ego realm.  This is not the full picture.  I am but a drop of water in a ocean that dances beyond time and space.  (Each drop is an integral part of the whole.)

And I've become so fascinated with Butoh because it is a form that lives beyond form.  Butoh is consciousness embodied.  It is a meditation and a journey, it is a re-membering of our place within the All, and a dis-membering of our so-called place in the social sphere.  Butoh is performative and ritualistic.  The leader in me is falling in love with Butoh.  Walking slowly is a radical act.

The body is on my mind a lot.
My body hurts, and I'm afraid of that impeding on my grand ideas..  I'm afraid I'll be forced to be realistic before I'm ready.  I know the body ages and eventually perishes.  Butoh speaks of "killing the body".  How do I let go of that which has been my primary vessel for a lifetime?
I have lived an existence of much physical effort.  (I was an athlete for ten years.)  Nowadays I seek to mindfully bridge my spirit and body, i.e. through meditative practices, physical theater, dance, etc.  However, I find it extremely difficult to find the right balance between pushing and letting go.  For instance, I want to become more flexible.  But how does one get there?  Flexibility through pushing?
I mean, I've built this self through a lot of tension and strength, and I've come a long blessed way.  Still, this body holds a story... There's my psyche, stored in this body.
(And of course, all of this personal stuff is actually embedded in a greater story: my body is but one interdependent manifestation of the greater natural and social bodies.)

Last night, my ex-girlfriend's lover practiced Tui Na massage on me.  (There is a lot of emotional background to this story, indeed.  In short, let's just say that I have loved her with such passion and pain, and now I am happy that they both have each other...)
I laid on my stomach, with my head in the hole of his massage table: that simple position already felt so relaxing... I was filled with gratefulness.  Besides, I have been craving touch and nurture for some time.  I told him I might very well sigh and cry, just to release some of what I've been feeling lately.  He then proceeded to warm me up and soon was pulling on my limbs and pressing my joints towards my center.  I had never experienced this specific method before, so I was a bit surprised by the intensity of it.  I felt that familiar mixture of pleasure and pain, or I should rather specify: that thin line between the two.  I could sense my mind and body resisting the pulls, engaging so as to protect myself.  I wanted to trust what he was doing, and I wanted to trust my body's own resilience and integrity, but it was quite a challenge.  My upper body is tight, my lower body is tight.  Am I so delusional to think I'm open-minded?
There is of course something to be said for the fact that he is my former lover's new lover... And as much as everything is perfect, that's quite a trip.  I could not quite understand the extent of what that meant for me.  It had to do with a special new way to trust... and surrender.


How I want to let go!
And perhaps,
inch Allah...
find (h) aum...

generational gasp

I talked to my mother on Skype yesterday morning.  I hadn't talked to my parents in a little while, as it has been the tendency recently.  I don't necessarily feel like it... or rather, I kind of dread it.
A friend told me I can help change the tone of our interactions by changing my expectations.  If I expect to feel the need to justify and defend myself, then I will create that very situation.  Instead I could imagine what I would want from a conversation with my mother: she is excited for me to go to Europe, she's inspired by my courage and relates with my spiritual take on life.
It's never pleasant to have your hopes crushed, so I didn't dare expecting that much.  I turned on the video ready to any possible turn of events.  She was there, in Quebec, looking so much like me.
Our conversation turned out the same way it usually does.  "Yes mom, I know... well... I do have enough funds to get there and then live decently for about a month... But that's part of the point, I'm going to be forced to put myself out there and busk for money."  I've always been very honest with my parents.  Perhaps that's part of the issue.  Perhaps I should protect them a bit more.  But I wouldn't know how, that's just how I am.  "I don't know what I'll do after mom, I already told you."  She gives me the subtle guilt trip "Your father and I were watching these street performers at the Summer Festival and we said 'Harvey and Eve could just as well come and perform here."  But mom, that's not the point.  I want to go experience European culture.  I'm not doing this to get further from you, regardless of what you think.  I'm just doing it because I have an incredible opportunity.  I wish you could see that.  But instead, I see worry and sadness on your face.  And I feel yucky.
My therapist says that we cannot expect our parents to understand the choices we make.  They grew up at a different time, in different circumstances.  They too probably worried their parents, when they left the farm and went to the city.  Come to think of it, there has been more drastic gaps between generations before.  I can barely imagine the clash that occurred when the hippy movement stirred the country.  Or when the folks who had fought so hard for communism saw their children abandon the ship and embrace capitalism.  Or when the children of aristocrats became anarchists and socialists.  Or when explorers took the seas and settled in America, leaving their ancestors behind.  You get the picture.  This is nothing new.
So I wonder, is this what parenting is all about?  You give twenty years of your existence to your kids, you labor and you sacrifice your own desires in order to raise them well, and one day, they "betray" you?  I wish our culture talked of the spiritual undercurrents of this journey.  It's not easy for us kids to "betray" those who gave us life.  But we cannot quiet our hearts and our visions, we cannot adhere to the belief that "owing" them means following in their exact foot steps.  And they, they need to feel validated in that experience.  It must be so difficult and so sad for loving and dedicated parents.  It is a great lesson of surrender.
I wish my mom would openly surrender a bit more.
I wish she expressed more enthusiasm, instead of contaminating me with her grief.
I'm working with it.

Burlesque clowning? (part 2)

Still, where the libidinal meets the intellectual, that's where I strive.  That's what I'm doing right now.  Writing, analyzing, the phenomenon of "HE: a genderstranged clown duo"...  What does it mean!?

It means that I would never have thought I'd be wearing fish nets and pink high heels.  I never imagined I'd be wearing a lipstick the color of which is "geisha's kiss".  As much as I have grown exponentially since delving into this new character, Magda, and as much as I sometimes wonder if I'm not just playing a secret part of myself (duh!), she is still very much a character.  Well, maybe, an alter ego.  It's all so fascinating.

This clown character is an exploration of power.  And since my body and image is of the feminine, it also has to be part of it.  (The truth shall set us free.)

There are different aspects to Magda's power.  She has that authoritarian edge, for one thing.  This is something I'm not done processing.  But there's also the sexy part...

Magda is "sexy", because she is sexual and civilized at the same time.  She gets off when she likes something.  She feels ecstatic passion for small things she finds.  The world is erotic, all around.

Yesterday Harvey and I did a shoot in Golden Gate Park, with a friend photographer.  (Harvey had found this spot on a walk a couple of weeks ago: an equestrian range, a sandy, circular, fenced up course, somewhere hidden around 40th Avenue.)  We did ourselves up, put our full costumes on, and played in the sunlight for about an hour while Liz took photos. 

Being in character in the middle of nature was a new experience.  I found it absolutely surreal and fabulous, as well as liberating.  Magda got to climb and balance on fences, she got to point to a bunch of nails planted in a majestuous eucalyptus tree (culture meets/wounds nature).  She got so turned on being outside, she wanted to be real wild.  Of course, she wore high heels that sank in the sand at every step, and there were moments when all this dirt and these obstacles actually suddenly annoyed and disgusted her.  She wanted to keep her status and her looks!!

What a complex deal...

I do feel that I am still figuring things out... but that's a good sign.

I've wanted to write this blog about burlesque for the past couple of weeks, ever since I randomly found a book entitled "Actresses and Whores" at the Main Public Library.  Of course, it's certainly (is that redundant?) that same place, inside of me that is, which allured me to this book "Actresses and Whores", and who's at the core of Magda's emergence.

I'm integrating my feminine power, my own way.

It's true I've never really imagined myself in a corset before.  But I have been pondering the darker aspects of the feminine for some time.  It's in my name after all.  Or rather, in my counterpart's name: Lilith.

P.S. I feel that I have so much more to explore in relationship to this "burlesque" thing.  Part of me is revolted, to see such a display.  I mean, these women are pretty much completely naked on stage!  It blows my mind.  How much power lies in that decision to wear one's denuded body and entertain others?  (Though I should reassert that the term "entertain" is already in itself a concept I am ambivalent about.)

I don't know that I would go that far myself.  But then again.  If I'm gonna embody and parody my power, and if I am to identify as a woman (with a mustache), then I must acknowledge that [in regard to the masculine, as well as fundamentally] there is such a magical power in a woman's body.  Therefore I must be honnest with my audience and play it.  There is power in having a feminine image.  ( I could get all deep psychology on you now.. but that too will have to be for another day!)  There is power in sexuality.

I'm just a clown.

"Like the first generation of English actresses, the first generation of female burlesque performers" (1868, see Lydia Thompson and The British Blondes) "instigated public debate over the proper display of female sexuality and forever changed the face of [US-American] theater." p.93 

burlesque clowning? (part 1)

"Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects." (wikipedia)


We are being told that we do "burlesque clowning."  But wait a minute; isn't that a tautology?  Sounds like the sweet sound of patriarchy to me!  
Don't they teach that clown is libidinal by nature?  Certainly.  Since their shamanic days, performers of the trickster archetype have adorned giant phalluses (phalli!), thrusted their hips, all the while being an integral part of  tribal sacred ceremonies!  Clowns have made sure to express the libidinal in humanity, in order to remind the people of the irremediable connection between earth and sky, matter and spirit, humans and gods.  
Clowns, like priests, have mostly been men.


So something has been going on; don't you think?  Women are clowning now, though the art form has undeniably changed.  (I'm not even talking about the "mass spectacle" of the circus clowns, although perhaps another day I will.)  I guess I am referring to the modern clown in [very] general.  I am talking about the stage, where ever since Shakespeare and Moliere clowns have grappled with other, perhaps more subtle and complex aspects of the Psyche.  Today, "clown work" involves sounding to the shadowy depths of our emotions and modern desires.  That's where the catharsis occurs, that's what we seek and reveal for others to remember.


So what happened to the sexual content?
You see, I spent six months training with six guys and one other woman who like me does not necessarily fully identlfy with all the expectations of the gender. (Let's note, right away, the words that chose to come out for me here.  "Guys" and "a woman".  Isn't that fascinating?  Doesn't it remind you of being in high school again?)  These men, when they played, so easily - and in fact incontrollably - seemed to revert to being boys again.  Their humor often was quite basic and lewd.  It was funny, and exasperating.  That's because I wanted to do "serious", "meaningful" work.  I wanted to work towards a message, to work in a context and give it thought and opinion.  Don't get me wrong, I know how absurd this is.  Clowns have the duty to shed those social layers, to drop the analyzing mind, and to strive for spontaneity.  Still, I couldn't (and still cannot) deny the drive in me, to make material which is grounded in an understanding of the times we live in. 
Now that I think of it...  Isn't it interesting that the boys had no problem expressing the libidinal, while I felt uncomfortable doing so?  I didn't feel there was room for it, or rather perhaps, no referential context for me to explore and express physical, sexual urges.  (I must say, however, that the program did not deliver half of what I expected from a clown training.)
It seemed natural for the boys.  I had to deal with layers upon layers of socialization and gender expectations.  I didn't know what to do with that.  It's a shame.
So tell me now, what is "burlesque clowning"?  It sounds to me like we've created a separate category for women who wish to unearth their sexuality in a performative context.  It sounds to me like we've been pushed to the periphery, somehow.  Or perhaps that's where we're budding, us women clowns and priestesses...

Sex At The Circus Burlesque

Sex At The Circus Burlesque, a photo by Dance Photographer - Brendan Lally on Flickr.

I'm not sure how I feel.. it's powerful... archetypal..

Burlesque Hall of Fame 2011 (Set 3)

Burlesque Hall of Fame 2011 (Set 3), a photo by dustin_wax on Flickr.

There's someone I'd like to meet..