on the way back home

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

mindmapping

mapping thoughts that float by during the run

mindmapping personal narrative

when the medium is the body

1.  As human beings, all are born free to dance. I have the right to dance. You have the right to dance.
2.  This body–your body, my body, the human body– is a dancer’s body.The right to dance shall not be limited by age, training, ethnicity, education, body size and shape, physical ability, or appearance.
3.  My right to dance in safety shall not be compromised. I lay the boundaries, call the shots, draw the line.
4.  I have the right to take risks, to grow, and to change.
5.  I have the right to feel what I feel, to explore what I feel, to dance what I feel. I have the right to express even when I have no words for what I feel.
6.  When I’m hot, I’m hot. When I’m not, I’m not. In dancing I can be very, very sexy in many, many ways. And, my dance doesn’t have to be sexy or even pretty. I don’t have to be appealing or attractive or pleasing to anyone.
7.  I have the right to dance by myself and with myself, to explore the depths of my own inner universes, to appreciate the rich complexity of my own experience, to discover and reinvent new selves within myself, to explore and expand the limits of my own perception, to deeply experience who I am, to feel my way through the vastness of the cosmos, to honor the wisdom of my own body in motion and in solitary stillness.

8.  I have the right to dance with others, to communicate, to learn and to teach, to nurture and be nurtured, to give and to take, to challenge and to be challenged, to be the mirror and to look into the mirror, to play and to work, to witness and to be witnessed, to bask in your light and to show off my brilliance.
9.  My brilliance also casts shadows, and my shadows have the right to dance, too.
10. “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”—article Nineteen, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The medium is the body, and everyone includes you.

Dance Lessons (on hearing Klezmer in the morning)

How does it happen?
Oh hearing his very first tune
the baby child knows
how to move, what to shake, how to groove
pushing, pulsing, swimming, playing
grinding hip and swaying spine
bouncing, dancing perfect time
sprung from some ancient oozing accident
this child never learned what to do

He just knew.

Want to learn how to dance?
Find a child.
One that’s not yet, but nearly two
And simply let the music play
Bend at the knees, shift and shimmy,
Sway your own little diapered bum

Watch me! Watch me! And I can make music, too!

You’ve been dancing since before you were even you
Knew it deep before birth
knew without choosing
Listen, feel it
Ma’s thumb bump thumb still throbs in you

The wise child knows what we forgot:
such dance is not hard
not taught, it’s not therapy, not for practice

This dance is for real.

variations on forster

God, guard me from the thoughts men think

God guard me from the thoughts men think

in the mind alone

He that sings a lasting song

Thinks in the marrow bone

William Butler Yeats