The more I dance the more I write

If I could shimmy like my sister Kate


Shake it like jelly on a plate


My mama wanted to know last night


How sister Kate could do it oh so nice


Now, all the boys in the neighborhood


Knew Kate could shimmy, and it's mighty good


I may be late but I'll be up to date

When I can shimmy like my sister Kate.

I mean, shake it like my sister Kate.

Those were the lyrics to my first ecstatic dance.  My dad played blues guitar and sang, and I’d shake and shimmy just as fast and furiously as my little three-year-old booty could across the ice blue carpet of our Florida living room. By the end of a jam session I'd usually ripped off most of my clothes and whirled around and around, my eyes streaming, to collapse in a heap.  This dance had a name.  I called it the widdy-waddy dance.

Since I was clearly not such a ballet type, my mother took me to tap class.  I loved the tah-TAH sounds my shiny Mary Janes made the first time I put them on, and hated the thick white tights that slid down my hips to create an unpleasant basket effect around my crotch during class as the instructor’s grating voice shouted, “shuffle ball change, shuffle ball change".  I crumpled.  We didn't go back.

The funny thing about the shadow, all those parts of ourselves we aren’t comfortable acknowledging, is that we leave our love and passion in the dark as often as we leave our fear and anger.  As Rilke says, “the darkness pulls in everything.”

After that one tap class I decided that I had a secret.  My way of dancing wasn’t o.k. with the rest of the world, so I needed to hide it.  The surest way to hide something is to bury it someplace where you can't even find it yourself, like a squirrel with an acorn.  That's what I did.  I told myself I wasn't interested in dance.  I didn't even like watching it very much.  I would still dance around alone in my room, but that didn't count.  That was silliness.  It wasn't dance.  When I danced in the theater, that was acting.  It wasn't dance.

The acorn stayed buried until I started developing my intuition during a terrible period of writer’s block.

The conversation with myself went something like this:

          "I HAVE to get out of this block.  What can I do?  WHAT?"

           "You are a dancer.  Dance."

           "What?  I'm not."

           "Yes you are."

           "Sure you don't mean that dance will shake me loose-- that's all?"

           "No.  You are a dancer.  It is a part of who you are.  Find it."

           "Really?  If I'm a dancer I'll be able to be a writer?"

           "Yes."

I didn't have anything to lose. I listened to that voice.

Within six weeks of my first epiphany I’d found my teacher, Dunya McPherson, and Dancemeditation.  I watched her dance and thought, ‘That’s it. I can come out now.  Its safe for me.  She's such an amazing dancer, and... she's doing the widdy-waddy dance!  She's moving just how her body wants to move.'  I went on her website and fell in love with her writing too.  Clearly perfect.

The writer's block took time to fully melt away; maybe a year of furious dancing within the healing context of Dancemeditation with its focus on awareness and respect for the body's innate intelligence.

When the block finally melted I thought, 'Well, maybe I got what I needed and now I can stop.'  But of course its not like that.  The more I deepen into dance, the more my writing deepens, the more I deepen.  The body is a doorway to reality beyond the personality, the ego, which can hold us all hostage.  It was my ego telling me I couldn't, shouldn't write.  My ego was telling me to stay small, safe, and to avoid criticism at all cost.

I'm often scared.   Dance is an art form that takes many years and hours to begin to master.  It isn't about steps, its about learning how to move the body with more and more articulation and awareness.  Five years and eighty days to earn my Dancemeditation teacher training certificate and I'm still near the beginning of that journey.  The exciting part is that like studying nature, studying the body from the inside out is also a life's work.

At its core my dance feels strong. The widdy-waddy dance is intact.  Its unfolding with greater variation every time I have an opportunity to learn technique, to discover more ways to move, different ways of seeing, feeling, of being in the world.

Rainbow Jelly in an Underwater Passageway (a five-year-old named this blog post)

Moonday.  Waning crescent.  Dark spring moon just before Wednesday's new moon.   A subtle time.   So many changes on the earth.

Last year in April, National Poetry Month in the US, I took the 30 poems in 30 days challenge.  I posted them on facebook-- which felt both bold and terrifying, but I knew that if I didn't post them I wouldn't write them.  Some days the poems stuck in my throat and twisted out of me, and other days they flowed.

After it was over I felt restored.  I hadn't written poetry regularly in over ten years.  I'd gotten my poetry mojo back. 

But after the month of forced poetry I disappointed myself.  I didn't keep it up the way I'd wanted to.  I punished myself for needing that outside influence, the uncritical cheering voices of friends.  Real writers don't need that.

Of course I know that's nonsense.  Any artistic or creative enterprise requires a dialogue with an inner five-year-old, and that five-year-old needs a big cheering committee sometimes, especially when she's been living inside of a small box for too long.

Now the poetry is taking over again anyway, because who can stop from writing poetry surrounded by all these blossoms?

So I'll start the 30-in-30 challenge today, just before the new moon, and continue every day through the next new moon.  Along the way I'll find ways to cheer for the five-year-old, and (with luck) keep it up this time after the 30 days are over.  Will report back on the progress.

It isn't too late to join me.  Never too late, actually.

Here is today's poem:

violet flower
stalk water-green,
translucent cells
rising in tiny spring spirals

deep purple petals
unfolding like a fan
in the hand of a flamenco dancer

inward wrist circling outward
down circling up
meeting the sun
for a half-life
of pure delight

In the comments I'd love it if you'd leave your own poem of course, and/or an answer to this question:

What or who encourages your inner five-year-old to be creative? 

monsters, perfect dads, and Frida Kahlo

Moonday.  New moon.  We are in the darkness before the light of spring which happens officially on the 20th of this month.  Its an excellent time for going in deep.  That's what I've been trying to do.

I've been having some trouble writing recently.  I need to make some minor adjustments to my play before it can go on to its next phase, several other projects want more attention, and then there is this little blog I love that hasn't seen a post in a week.

I called up a good friend to talk about it. 

'Well,' I said, 'I have a lot going on, but I think that what's really been stopping me are my limiting beliefs.'  She laughed.  'Do I sound too psycho-babbly?' I asked. 

'No,' she said.  'I just don't hear that very often.  Its refreshing.' 

'Oh!' It was like she'd pinned a gold star on my cardigan.

I told her what was stopping me.  It was this thought:

Its too hard to make a living as a writer, so you shouldn't even try.   

I know its origin.  When I was a little kid pounding away happily on the electric typewriter, my dad sat me down.  He told me that only two percent of writers make their living at it.  I needed to find something else to do.  Writing for fun was great, but find another job.

To my child's ears he meant that I would never be good enough at the thing I loved to do the most.

Many, if not most people have a version of this story, some way more intense than mine.  There is usually some doom-sayer along the way-- a friend, a teacher, often someone with good intentions, and no amount of singing the Wonderful World of Disney theme song can shake them out of the mind.

'Its a monster' I said. 

'What do you do with monsters?' my friend asked.

'First you turn on the light, and then... you help them.'  I said, remembering one of my favorite Rilke quotes:

'perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us.' 

'How do you help them?' she  asked.

'I don't know. That's the problem.'

What do you think your monster wants?' she asked.

'She wants a good dad.  She felt abandoned by her dad.'

'You might have to be her dad,' my friend said.  And then she said, 'Frida Kahlo. That just popped into my mind.' Its great having intuitive friends.

That was it.  I love Frida Kahlo.  I adore her work, her inspiring life story, and I love the way she would usually wear these timeless colorful skirts, and then show up in a suit.

I'm like that.  I'm a bit of a princess with a dash of drag king.  I live mostly in silk, but occasionally I lust after herringbone jackets, french cuff shirts, wide legged pants and fedoras.

 
So now I'm assembling my perfect dad costume for my monster.    He looks good in a hat.  His shoes match his belt and umbrella.  But he looks comfortable, gentle, like an abused animal might follow him home.  He's basically a mix between Johhny Depp, my super stylish and wildly encouraging college design professor, and my grandpa.  My monster is delighted.  My perfect dad tells her that she can be anything she sets her heart on. (Yes, like the Disney song says.)

*For the record, I have a pretty good adult relationship with my real dad now, and wouldn't change him, even though he still thinks that John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever is the pinnacle of style.

This moonday, I'm thinking about monsters and how I can help them.  If you want to share a story, or some inspirational art, quote, or poems that help you to help your monsters... I would love to see/read them.
Happy Moonday!

Writing Myself Out of a Box

I don't want to write a process-y post.  I don't think that anyone will want to read it.  But nothing else will come out, so here it is.

When I started this blog, I was in conflict.  I think of myself as a writer, dammit.  But I'm also an herbalist.  I wanted felt like I should have an herbal blog on my business website, friendlyherbalist.com.  But since it seemed to be stuck, I decided I'd just start a 'say anything' blog and see what came of it.

I didn't want to write-- exclusively-- about herbs.  I didn't want to be-- exclusively-- an herbalist.  I was afraid that somehow my artist self was going to be swallowed up by my herbalist self.  I'd started my journey into herbalism when I was pretty creatively blocked.

By the time I wrote my first post here I'd worked my way out of the block, largely thanks to years spent learning about medicinal plants, and through them deepening my relationship to nature and my body.

When you enter into a relationship with a plant, learning all about it firsthand by touch, smell, feel, taste, listening to the sound of its leaves in the wind, and listening to your intuition about its healing medicine-- it changes you.

When you gather its flowers or dig its roots and make herbal preparations that then cure your ailments-- your aches and pains, your grief, your scattered mind, your brokenness; it gives you strength.  Its incredibly empowering.  So then of course you can make your music, or dance like no one is watching or... write a play.  You can speak clearly.  You can step into your power instead of giving it away.   Having a relationship with the medicine plants is a portal into the sacredness of the earth and your own body.

 

Marsh mallow flower, wild harvested last July, Brooklyn, NY.

So, as you may be able to tell, I'm passionate about this stuff.  And what's been coming up for me lately is that... I have to share it.  More.  Its needed.  What's that line from T.S. Eliot?  'Hurry up now, its time.'

I love lots of things:  Poetry, dogs, dancing-- even dog dancing.  The theater has my heart.  But the sacredness of the earth... that is what I know.  That's the part of me that feels like a clear channel from sky to earth and back again. 

So I'm going to write more about that.  Not exclusively.  Oh no.  (Don't worry scared inner writer--I'm not boxing you in.) I think that I'm just ready to claim something.  Some knowing.  We'll see.

Feedback is good.  Are these topics-- deepening relationship to nature-- sacredness of body and the earth--- hands on herbal medicine-- of interest to you?  If you enjoy this blog, what would you like to read more about?

Defeating My Red Knight: Best Challenge 09

Day 9 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge:  Best Challenge 09

In Terry Gilliam's film The Fisher King, Robin Williams plays a homeless man named Parry who cowers in mortal terror at the sight of an imaginary red knight, the embodiment of his fear.  The film consistently blurs the line between imagination and reality, suggesting that the line is not that important.  It doesn't matter whether or not the Red Knight really exists, it matters only that he be defeated.

My greatest challenge of 2009 was imaginary.  It was all in my head, and it was as real to me as the Red Knight was to Parry.  2009 hasn't been the easiest year.  There were deaths of people I loved, break ups with friends, job losses, but nothing was more difficult for me to handle than this:

After much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, on a sweltering day in August with my back sticking to the leather desk chair, I proofed my script one last time before dripping through streets radiating with thick white haze blooming with sulfur, to get to Kinkos.  Then I handed my packaged script to a kind Fed-Ex worker after checking the address one last time.

That was it.  Red Knight defeated.  Heavy iron armaments fell off my body and clattered onto the concrete.  It was the first piece of writing I had sent out in over fifteen years.  It didn't matter whether or not it was accepted.  I had sent it out.  I would send out more work in the future.  I was free.

If you like this post, you may like this one too.

Poetry in Hell

I used read my poems, the ones I wrote incessantly, at a bar in Adam’s Morgan, Washington D.C. called Hell. It was in the basement of a club called Heaven, which I never visited. The walls and ceiling of Hell Bar were painted red with Halloween zombie hands sticking out of the light fixtures. The place felt safe: part womb, part pirate hideout. I made certain to be there every Sunday night.

The bartender would turn off the heavy metal screaming from the speakers. I would sit at a tiny round table nursing a beer and let the poems wash over me. 

A rumpled balding man played the dulcimer every week as he recited long poems about herons. A Capital Hill type guy in pressed khakis and shiny loafers read acidly funny treatises in the persona of Wile E. Coyote. 

I nicknamed a Courtney Love-esque punk girl the cum poet because she recited her opus on cum at least once a month. I’d smirk in a dark corner as she spoke, clutching my Sam Adams, a grown-up beer, something a teenager would never order, I calculated, because I was in high school and there illegally.

I usually kept to myself. I listened to the poets, read one to three short new poems that, to quote the founder Greg Gerding, I ‘soberly, painstakingly, worked on’ during the week and left as soon as the heavy metal resumed to catch the last metro train back to Northern Virginia. 

But I felt connected. Over time the hell poets became my congregation. Greg’s poems inspired me to write on bar napkins. We were all there for the love of the word, small w. Clapping at the end, no heckling, and a generous time limit for each poet were the only rules.

When I got to New York to continue my study of theater at NYU, I went to the Nuyorican and was lost. Some of the poetry was phenomenal, but it was all so…. DECLARATIVE! I didn’t see a place in the Slam world for depressed middle-class suburban girl verse full of gentle sadness and a love of the small.  Where was the equivalency of Poetry in Hell? The anything goes kind of place? My studies took over; I never found it. I stopped writing poetry.

This lead in part to a toxic writer’s block which leached beyond poetry into everything else I tried to write. Poetry had been my first church. Time unwound; meanings were illuminated; my deepest self was given voice. Without it I was silenced in ways I hadn't anticipated. 

The block lasted from age 19 to 29. I twisted, cajoled, bullshitted, wept and fasted, wept and prayed my way out of it, along the way finding new congregations of actors, dancers, seekers, gardeners, and herbalists. But I think that I may have bypassed years of struggle if I had simply sought out other people who wrote poetry. ‘They’re doing it. I can do it too.’ I need conspirators. I know this now.