Via

There has been so many balls up in the air.  I have been breathing quite consciously.  (I have also been smoking tobacco more.. hhhmm?)  I have been trying to take in all the affects that my situation is producing... this departure, this adventure...
I am flying to Frankfurt in less than a month.
I am supposedly leaving San Francisco.
I am approaching the crossroad,
again.
Janis Joplin... Ball and Chain...
I am sitting in my bedroom, in San Francisco, listening to the Blues,
So filled with Love
My home,
my community..
And I imagine of a cold white winter in Montreal, writing, gestating, exploring, reconnecting...

Per-spective.
That's why I travel!  I'm addicted to perspectives, I am.  I see myself bounce constantly between opposites, trying to keep my balance standing on the axis of the paradox, holding the scales..
It's a beautiful virtue.

If I can remember to breathe..

Meanwhile, I am in love with the world.  Not that I've forgotten about "the state of the world."  My everyday is filled with instances of suffering.  It's hard.  And for some reason I have been experiencing something I have come to identify as... abundance.. That's the word: abundance.  A concept I tend to be skeptical about.  A quality that many friends in the Bay Area are in the process of creating and redefining... So what does it mean?
At its best I could mean envisioning the possibility of happiness and flow, of reciprocity, mutuality, and open communication.  It means envisioning health and wealth, getting with the fact of our fundamental interconnectedness.

You know what it is?  It's the presence of my friends.  Beautiful, angelic souls... celebrants and warriors, healers, visionaries, intellectuals, artists, humans..
Remember, Ev, how hard you fell in love with this place?  The saga continues...
So I wonder, what am I setting up for myself?  All these homes.  This large crossroads.  An experiment in free will.  Eve's dilemma!
(Apples are a gift of the Great Goddess, after all. Like bees, haze and seas.)

There are several balls up in the air.  It's a good thing I like to juggle.

Bodiespeak

This is why I love living in San Francisco:
Last night I went to my neighbours' house, which is actually about four doors down, and is painted dark purple.  It was the first time I was going to hang out with Travis, a friend of a friend who I have met in several different occasions.  Travis is the guy who never wears a shirt.  Travis is a character.  He is a marvelous man, who has created his profession as a "cuddle therapist".  It would be long to describe what cuddle therapy is, so here's a short piece by photojournalist  Lauren Crabbe.  Travis is a lovely being.  We talked about his "15 years of playing video games every-single-day" and a trip that is.  The virtual world, the age of computer connections, this alternate reality which was created and allows people to live a life of adventure and fantasy.. 
We talked about the pineal gland and Dimethyltryptamin.  And we admired the wonderful aesthetic value of whipped cream.  We mentioned negative numbers too.  And of course, there was polyamory and how it is really a complete way of life, of presence and mindfulness, rather than merely a sexual thing.
It is so refreshing to meet someone who wants to articulate those things.  Sexuality is an aspect of our use and experience the energies that run through us.  (With... Travis(!) - but another one; my recent-former roomate- we got into a heated conversation, a couple of weeks ago, about what we called "tantric clowning." But I shall also return to this...)


So I love living in San Francisco.  Because here, at the moment, I meet a lot of people, men and women, who understand and live out a revolution in consciousness.  We are queers and we are here. :)  We're at the last frontier of a big experiment.  We're populating a city in a foggy Bay, her hills and curves...
We meet the East and its sacred understanding, that all is One and One is Two.  And we talk of the ten thousand things around the kitchen table, on a Tuesday evening.


And tonight... again...  A conversation with two of my roomates (Blessed be these powerful womyn!!) gave voice to so many insights.  Imagine three female therapists sitting around a bowl of pop corn (homemade, seasoned with agave, sesame seeds, cinnamon, and salt) talking about romantic relationships and projective identification.
Guilt is an ego-centric phenomenon.  That's okay; it was meant to happen this way.  We might just have overgrown that mechanism!  Because what's the point of taking the blame when somebody else's "psycho-emotional" buttons get pushed and led them to act out hold woundings?  We all do it, that's for sure.  We all re-enact the stories we believed in as kids.  And some of these stories were real, and some were very real.  But if we're lucky, we've had the privilege of getting ourselves beyond the level of survival, so that we do not depend on a caretaker.. or simply.. an other.
Fear of abandon, for instance, is a real experience.
In many circumstances, the child who loses a parent will experience a threat to her sense of survival.  The developing "I" is still depended upon the reflection of an other, and the loss of that reflection is perceived as of directed towards the "I", thus imprinting the the familiar "Daddy left because I was a bad boy/girl" mentality/belief.
Now, as adults... we seek ways to grow beyond this guilt.  We try our best and our relationships still bring up so much wounding, so much hardship, so much pain.  We seek intimate relationships and we come to face so many resistances once we're engage in them.
Or do we fall into them a bit more compulsively... par la force des choses?
We find our mirrors.
To find ourselves.
Isn't that so much beyond us?!
Isn't that proof that we do not have control, and therefore aren't responsible for so much of what happens? (Don't get me wrong, however, for we do agree that it is an art to find balance on this line.)  And if we don't have control, then of course it can be scary.  So we may feel angry, or perhaps frightened into numbness... 
But giving up control alleviates a tremendous part of the guilt.


And at the same time let us not forget that the fear is real.  The being and the body know the feeling.  It is a signal, a notice that something is potentially dangerous for the self.  It is a sign to become not only careful, but mindful.  What is the fear about?  As adults, some fears will be imagined.. based in fantasies.  But sometimes,  they are right on.  And what my roommate (R.) was saying is that this intuitive attribute, which we all have, has been repressed.  If we're lucky and privileged, we can come to possess a good sense of our body and our emotions in it.  And fear, for instance, is a good one to notice.  The body does not lie.


There is wisdom in intuition.  There is wisdom in listening.
There is power in claiming your ability to listen.
There is power in re-claiming your ability to listen.
Ase!
My other roommate, N., said that.  The crazy thing is that it was almost as if she'd been sent to name that for me.  I mean, isn't that what keeps coming up in therapy?


That and so many other things.
All One.
Because all me.  Which is you, and you, and you..

Empty of Air, Fool of Bones

A weekend ago I took a Butoh workshop with a teacher from New York, Vangeline.  The work in-corpo-rated elements of:
"Japanese Butoh techniques, guided imagery, bio-energetics, core energetics, creative movement, improvisation, release techniques, elements of Noguchi gymnastics."
The depth and power of this experience in my life has rippled on, all week.  So I thought I'd finally attempt verbalization ... as impossible and absurd as that is.

I/Not-I
Pulled up and forth
by Father, sky,
and with each step
I re-member
the body of my Mother
And I mourn
her pain in giving birth
and this yearning to fly

Aware, Grateful
self-consciously
stringed in between
the darkness and light
of under and above.
of inward and outward

With each breath
seeking to concentrate
to become
a empty vessel,
like a channel
between the worlds
of our children
and our ancestors

An empty bag of air,
only water and
bones left
Within consciousness
of a place between
life and death
and the crux
of a great transformation

beyond the fear
and hopes
that seem to stand
at the crossroads

--

Vangeline is a trip because her approach is.. shamanistic.  It is basically trance work, although it is also dance-theater.
Vangeline is a Butoh artist and the Artistic Director of The Vangeline Theater. She was born in France and moved to New York in June 1993. She founded The Vangeline Theater in December 2002 and has been training extensively with Butoh Master teachers; Diego Pinon of the Butoh ritual Mexicano Center, Tetsuro Fukuhara, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Katsura Kan, Yumiko Yoshioka, Ko Murobushi, and Yoshito Ohno from Japan.

Such a powerful human person!  Such powerful work!  Such powerful Connection... it was like making love with God...

(Butoh tends to give me that)

Shedding layers of mind 

and expectations

Humans

Through

The rabbit holes

to subtler dimensions

We tune in

and turn... slowly... on

the axis mundi

harnessing

kundalini

Through breathwork and visualization, us 20 dancers were guided into alternate states of consciousness.  We moved hyper-consciously, always only necessarily.  Moving from within.  Deep listening... with openess to react spontaneously, when the impulse arises.  Impulses flourish through the body, like infinitesimally small flowers which bud from the darkest most mysterious and deepest places within... 

Butoh.

People ask me.  What is it?

and I still I don't quite know.

I think I cried a tear where I heard our teacher say, that to make sacrifice is to make sacred.  Because I do often feel such a pull towards "sacrifice".  (It's not my fault, it's in my blueprint! Just ask my astrologer.)  And did you know, that the Online Etymology Dictionary:

The sense of "something given up for the sake of another" [was only] first recorded 1590.

This makes so much more sense.  For I do feel pulled to make things sacred.  I want to highlight life, acknowledge the trip.  I want to celebrate within it.  Because it is.  

But still... what does it mean?  To perform ritual.

To follow and lead.

And how all of this is really what I'm talking about when I say: I study clowning.