'bout time, now

Gawd, it's been awhile. I am now inspired to write something because I told someone I write things, then I looked at my most recent posts, and they were all about being sick and tired. Which was true then. But now I feel the need to update and say, I'M NOT SICK AND TIRED! Dear reader(s), take note!

This not being sick and tired has made a major change in my life. I hadn't realized how burnt I was until my body absolutely shut down and I was sick for... over 3 months. It took me doing nothing for a week to begin feeling able to come back in to the world. And since I've come back in to the world, I've moved, given way advanced notice on my job, and begun working on prerequisites for a Pilates course, a path that I hope will allow me to sit behind a computer less, investigate our relationships to our bodies and our bodies relationship to our senses of history, time, place, and belonging more.

And by that I mean that I want to teach people how to use their abs.

The summer program has begun again at the SF Conservatory of Dance. This is the first year, since the program started, that I have not been heavily involved. It is a relief. Instead of feeling as though I'm not working hard enough by not dancing 40+ hours a week, or doing the admin work to support such a program, or both, I'm able to appreciate what such a commitment did to shape me. I have the balls to consider myself an artist because of that program, and every success I have had is a direct result of the connections I've made through it. Dear SF Conservatory of Dance: thank you, once again, for saving my life.

That notice I gave was to leave my current position at the Conservatory. It's an incredibly difficult paradox for me to wrestle with. I am leaving something I love deeply, and that has meant a lot to me and made me in to who I am. It's hard. I cannot yet articulate why it is also necessary... other than I need to make room for more experiences. I feel comfortable at the Conservatory, which is great, but also dangerous. I could contently sit there and watch the beauty around me for the rest of my adult life. Contentment is not what I seek, so I must move on.

This fall, I will learn how to instruct people in how to do the hundreds, and roll ups, and other such things that are said to "tone, strengthen, and lengthen your body." I do believe in physical fitness, but fitness is just one level of things. Our bodies have stories to tell we are not even aware of. There is something in my ribcage that I don't know the truth of yet. It relates to something else in my hip, which comes from a need to protect myself from every sense of trauma I felt when I tore my ACL four years ago.

I recently had a conversation with a wonderful friend and violinist. He's been spending an hour every day retraining a harmful muscle pattern he developed which has been affecting his control and ability to hold long slow tones. He's had it for years, but not done anything about it. He said, "I think I'm finally ready to let it go."

That struck a chord with me. I'm very acutely aware of the holding patterns within my own body. I know what muscles get tight, and they have been this way for 4 years - more than long enough to fix it. If it is purely a physical problem, why haven't I been able to? Also, if I fix the physical problem, what else will change?

I fear that this post is beginning to turn in to more of a circuitous ramble, so I'm going to cut it off. Outside!

I am still tired

I just opened a copy of In Dance that has been sitting in various places around my room, with the intention that I read it, for about a month. First, I put it on my bookcase with that stack of reading material. Then it lived by the couch, where I tend to hang out - more obvious, thus maybe I'll get to it? Then, it moved to my bed, where I tend to read nightly. And yet... still unopened.

It fell off my bed, landed on the floor, sat there for two days, and I finally picked it up just now.

I skimmed the headlines, and I can't for the life of me get interested in any of this.

Am I tired and need a break from dance saturation? Am I developing more of a sense of what I want to create, and with that turned off by experiences not my own? Am I just lazy?

In the AM

I have developed a little morning regimen for myself, basically an intake of things that are supposed to help me get/stay healthy. This morning I considered briefly how odd it might be:

1) glass of kombucha
2) glass of emergen-c with a multi-vitamin, vitamin d, and fish oil
3) new addition! two raw garlic cloves mashed up with honey. eat quickly, and have on hand as a chaser:
4) bowl of granola with blueberries and keifer
5) cup of coffee to sip while relaxing and writing a blog

Dear friends, if I have garlic breath for the next month as I attempt to recover from this insatiable cold, you have my apologies. If anyone has any tips for recovering lost physical and mental energy, please send them along.

clearing space

I taught my first "Basic Ballet for Adults" class yesterday. It was lovely. The adults were sublime, really. I fell a little bit in love with each of them. I hope they come back, but at the same time, I am preparing myself for the fact that they are adults with busy schedules. Not being as obsessed with dance as I am, other things may take priority.

Today, I am indulging in the simplicity of a Sunday morning shielded with a refusal to start doing anything productive until I get bored of: laying in bed reading, drinking a large cup of coffee, and staring out my window at the Inner Sunset Farmers' Market. What BLISS.

Ran in to an acquaintance last night at a dance show, a fellow dancer. We come from opposite sides of the training spectrum: I am classically trained, he comes from release dance and the AXIS syllabus. I wouldn't say I know him well, but when we do run in to each other in the dance community, I feel as if we meet with a mutual respect and understanding. A feeling of, "I know you. You are someone else who is doing it; you are someone else who is pursuing this odd and beautiful choice of lifestyles." And when we run in to each other, we seem to often talk about... our day jobs.

He's a physical trainer. He works approximately 3 hours a day (I think?), standard work hours are from 6-9am. Then there's time for class, and then, as it goes rehearsals and performances, which are things which can keep him awake until almost the start of the next day. He once told me that the only way he makes it work is with "a rigid napping schedule."

It's interesting to see how we all concoct our lives. I don't think that anyone who's involved in the meat of it thinks it is or ever can be easy. I'm sure we all at times would rather give in, and I know I have been there at several points in my life. Currently, despite the fact that I can blanketly place "busy" as the culprit, I am feeling like I'm always giving in on something, always compromising one point to make room for another - leaving me feeling constantly behind, in debt, and ill-equipped to take on it all. Often this means that I don't get to enjoy the fruits of my own labors: as soon as it's done, something else is sitting there waiting to take my time and mental energy.

One of the things I'm trying to include in this constant struggle for my attention is down time. This means I have to ardently refuse to let anything take over. Right now, I am firmly insisting on taking the pleasure of a Sunday morning including: the dregs of my coffee, one more chapter, and the sight of two golden retrievers and one black lab wagging their tails at each other next to a pile of oranges.

things considered

I started reading a book over my vacation that now sits, two-thirds finished, next to my bed. It was a pleasant distraction when I was home, but now that I'm back, I really don't think it's that much of a book.

But, anyway, tonight I was thinking of one passage from it, about a man who prays and prays to god to let him win the lottery until one day, finally, a frustrated god replies, "My son, BUY A TICKET!"

I was half thinking about this because my friend, who gives my a ride home from Oakland a couple times a week told me that when she gets super frustrated with her job she sometimes buys a lottery ticket and hopes.

I think that... my life has several lottery tickets taped to the sides, the biggest thus far being the one wherein I decided to quit my degree program, move to San Francisco, and do everything I could to self-define as a dancer. With a gritty amount of desperation, I really really hoped that that would work.

(It has?)

I feel like I've come to a crossroads of frustration and lack of clarity and I need to buy another ticket. I'm just beginning to see what this one will look like, and it's as terrifying as it is exciting.

notes on a man who immediately needs a unicycle

I've been spending more time with the Dandelions this fall, an experience which often leaves me in a slightly awe-struck space, gently shaking my head in with a weird twisted up half-grin on my face, with one phrase going through my head, "What has become of my life?"

Lately, I have seen: two grown men playing dress-up with a matronly pair of glitter gowns, a man teaching the circle of fifths in his underwear, a man lifting another man in a wheelchair over his head. And lately, I have: sung the circle of descending fourths in arpeggiated scales, been top and bottom on a Balkan melody, wrestled until ten o'clock at night, and had several conversations over the course of 2 days about how to get a unicycle to a man who needs it immediately.

Not that I object to any of it, I just wonder where it all came from, and how it stemmed so naturally out of practicing pointing my toes for so many years.

I've been reflecting on that my life feels 10 steps ahead of me, as if it's taking its own direction, and I'm left struggling to keep up. I feel as if all of my choices are made by the course of events, and all I have to do is work. This is the circumstance of living that has gotten me to creating dance installations in an art gallery, pursuing teaching basic ballet to adults, and bonding with the program manager of a major foundation about the craziness of a day in arts administration.

For example, and then I'll close this entry, at 8pm last night I told a friend, "I'm not planning on doing any more of my own work anytime soon."

By 10pm life had told me differently, and I think more is coming.

All I want to do

is practice things that are art-like. Such as take dance classes, sing, play music, move in a giant room all by myself, and sit around drinking coffee and ruminating about things I'd like to create. That's all I want to do.

That is why I am sitting at my office computer writing a blog and leaving that stack of emails and paperwork for later.