There is something in these cells and how one becomes many. And they eventually decide for themselves. How sometimes they walk away, and may hate you or love you or neither. I think of the thin magic invisible line where they don't work or they do.

It was some kind of plea for consciousness—even as we know it's all gonna go. The things we need to stand for in the time that we are here. And to walk, eyes open, to the pain for the right to see the joy.

I held my crying goddess for an hour. Breathing in her grief and guilt, and breathing out my own. Feeling the cave of my heart, too solid; understanding how ribs could easily become too heavy to move. But breathing. And hanging in the eternity between my questions,
and her
"I don't know"

I felt my fingers slip off the edge of her rib, wondering of flesh and water and stone. And felt, on my own chest, the peeling back of the Y-shaped incision that a body in question comes down to. And the hindsight epiphany that we imagine will someday come.

The answer to what was; long after.

Article By: Laura Fuller
Photos By: Pamela Miller Macias



Can I know the world beyond self and other? What is healing if no line is drawn between healthy and sick? In a vision of wholeness, I am that which is beyond self and other, and healing is the release from divisions of healthy and sick. To heal is to re-member all our parts and somatic philosophies consider the felt-sense of Unity.



You may think of somatic healing within a single body: I give breath to any part of me that died. I return movement and flow to my parts that got scared-frozen in the past. I draw a circle around the fragments of my mind through time and space. Healing brings all of my cells to the present, reconnects any feeling or experience that I forgot was also God, and integrates in perfection what I once saw as shadow. And, a single body is just one tiny cell in the body of this world…this world, one cell among infinite worlds. Acknowledging this hologram, I will consider the somatic healing of the body of this world. By moving our bodies, can we move bodies of power? By remembering feeling, can we envision solutions that are anchored in the truth that we all are One?
The following is an account of my experience of a project that looked at the somatic healing of social structure, seeking to move the energy of a city.

Utopia/Dystopia
From June to December of 2007, Los Angeles Poverty Department—a Skid Row based theatre group—organized the project, Glimpses of Utopia. The project included public talks, theater performance and improvisational movement and writing workshops using the experience of the body—touch, movement and emotion—as a way to get beyond the duality of Utopia/dystopia, looking for a vision that could relate to the whole. Participants worked from their individual visions of Utopia to create, as a group, meditative movement sequences that were composed of each person’s vision. Each workshop generated a different sequence and, on performance day, the sequences were repeated for fifteen minutes in a line spanning the ten blocks between Skid Row and Los Angeles City Hall. Some passer-bys spontaneously joined in with movements of their own, and one woman held her arms to the sky and sang. The installation on the sidewalks of L.A. at Friday rush hour made visible the people that some might want to disappear, and called into question bodies of power and bodies of flesh, and how, through feeling, we might move out of division to a life that is fluid and sustainable.



Soft, Smooth, slow. Was it a forced move? Easy. Proof. The body moves its own direction, unless you want it to move differently. In the middle of a movement. Can you change to another? Not without making a mistake. A fall. A break in the pattern. Sloppy. Oops. There it goes again. Movement.
-- Sharonda Taylor (workshop participant)



Bodies get dense and stuck sometimes, like the cells are glued together and forget to dream and change. Maybe its because they dreamed so hard before, but gravity would only pull down. Maybe because they went so far in one direction that it got hard to turn around. I led a workshops at the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. I was supposed to lead two workshops, but nobody showed up for one. I was told that this was because it was near the first of the month and people went out to spend their welfare checks. They disappeared each month, but would return when their money was gone. I thought about survival—it’s amazing that these women are alive, but many get just enough to keep going, not enough to go anywhere else. And circles make people tired. Domesticated. The organizer walked me through a TV room filled with women in easy chairs. We asked if anyone wanted to do the Utopia workshop and most did not turn their heads. They were tired. I was very aware of my whiteness and of my body’s freedom to move. It seemed ridiculous that I was asking them to dance.

Can we, I, them, see today? The feelings showing through the skin? How it walks across the street to the shelter, then the clinic, to the food line. Or maybe the phone can hear the feelings of relief. I’m here. My utopia is starting. Seeing, feeling myself apart. We, them.
---Pat Nix (workshop participant)



Dys/connection
Felt-sense knows that the body was essential for this project. Standing in front of a person, feeling their warmth and breath, is much different than calculating on paper. Dancers understand that the body knows the truth—both in a personal and transpersonal sense—and that if you move from truth, you move energy, and that will move the world. Giving people opportunity to dance reminds them of the importance of accessing their own truth, and the fact that this movement was performed in public space reminds everyone of the reality we are creating together; how it impacts each individual on the levels of mind, flesh, and soul.



I interviewed John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers, two of the organizers of Glimpses of Utopia. Malpede (LAPD Artistic Director) told me that one of the main intentions in forming the Los Angeles Poverty Department was to “get the real-deal out to normal-ville and connect social policies that keep systems in place, to the lived experience of the people who are, to a certain extent, run by them”. He explained that “just telling people about other’s experience is not good enough because we have a disconnect where hearing it doesn’t mean doing anything about it. We live with 47 million people without health insurance and for some reason that doesn’t seem to be a problem, until we feel it ourselves”.



The participants in the workshop I led—some of the people who have really felt poverty--agreed that understanding connection is what we need. I did not have to explain to them that the body is the same as the mind, is the same as the soul, is the same as the world. And, with their sense of unity, they expressed a great hope: if I can move my heart, I can move the world. Our discussion centered around disconnection. I started with the Utopian vision written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, the passage that coined the term “Utopia”. More thought that problems came from greed and that, since some took too much, others got too little. His solution concerned equal division of resources. Division—exactly what my group thought was the problem. His Utopia was still a closed system with limited resources. And his idea of good society was so solid that it cast a shadow—dystopia: bad society. In that paradigm, for there to be sweet dreams, there must be nightmares.



One woman described how separation was concretized in city planning. Housing projects were single-person spaces, not good for families or community. Downtown LA itself has taken on the shape of this Utopia/dystopia dualism. Over the past 40 years, the map has split between Bunker Hill, the redeveloped financial district standing above, and Skid Row below, the area with one of the nation’s largest homeless populations. At the same time, the creation of luxury artist lofts has made the area unaffordable for many local artists. Utopia, of course, is a matter of perspective. In the example of Bunker Hill and Skid Row, who is to say which is light and which is shadow? Skid Row, often described by the media as the worst of the worst is also, according to Malpede, one of the largest recovery community in the world. However, as the Utopia of those in power grew, Skid Row was declared its shadow and given less and less space. The compartmentalization that once said, “you stay over there”, started to say “you can’t even stay there anymore”.



More Parades/More Smooth Space
In Fall 2006, the L.A. Police Department enacted the Safer Cities Initiative to “re-vitalize” (or as some joked, “re-whitelize”) downtown. It created ways to arrest people on the streets. Drug possession was prosecuted as dealing, and it became illegal to sleep on the streets at night or even sit down on the curb during the day unless, as explained in the ordinance, you are “watching a parade”. The ACLU fought this ordinance and ultimately won, however in the time of its enforcement and throughout the process of appeals, 8,000 arrests were made. One of the inspirations for the movement element of this project was that, so long as people do not stop moving—are not standing, sitting or lying for too long—they are not violating the law. Some Utopian visions written in these workshops included a request for more parades. That makes me wonder what a parade means today. Used to be that a parade was a stroll in public, a promenade, a walk with the intention to be seen. Now, it is something to be watched. A procession of other people. A culture of observers viewing from designated areas. We all need to be participants and we all need to be seen. What about the people who can’t stand up? Who need help? Who will look at them and see their needs? Let’s face it, sometimes we have to sit down. Sometimes situations drop us to our knees. Sometimes we have to lie flat on our backs.



It is a beautiful idea that we should always be moving; it holds the understanding that balance is not a still place. Dance, fully embodied, is a political act as it considers bodies and then negotiates force to move. However, it is important to look at why and how we move. Are we moving only because we are afraid to be still? Dancing can also be twirling in circles, repetition and training can carve the grooves deeper. Are we really going anywhere? And when do we get to lie down?

The question is whether our movement is out of habit, or out of conscious choice. I asked John Malpede where he thought our disconnect came from, and he said, “the solution is the problem, we are all so busy trying to do stuff.” I was reminded of the density of cells pressed together, no room for one to slip past another, no liquid, no space for a new structure to be born. We are busy being busy. Busy sustaining an old way that probably isn’t working any more. No time for things to restore. No time for people to be sick equals no time to heal. God forbid you need something from somebody.



Henriette Brouwers said, “We have to look for new ways of protesting to really create some space in all this busy-ness. Even protests have gotten so organized. Being on skid row and just moving is so much more profound--because it’s slowing down. It makes you perceptive of who you are with and the reactions of people to what you are doing. And so your mind sort of opens and you are really connecting on a different level.” For Brouwers, the solution of seeking space reconciled the duality of Utopia vs. dystopia. The dances were “not just on a directional level of ‘I am protesting against this’, but a real movement of people trying to get a different energy out.” Malpede added that “protests have become formulaic and discrediting them is formulaic---at least if you do something new they have to go back to the drawing board to discredit you. The notion of sound bytes, staying on talking points, Power Point and multiple choice…it’s all about ‘let’s remove the infinite and shrink wrap it’. In a culture of quip, canned response and over stimulation, when you slow down and create space, the humanity that comes through shocks people.” Imagine these physical meditations, firmly rooted yet deeply moving. Imagine the normal traffic of cars and pedestrians rushing by. It is revolutionary to slow down and feel.



The Drop and the Ocean

A raindrop falls from the sky to the ocean and it is hard to discern one bit from the whole. As it hit the surface, did the raindrop feel different than the ocean? Or maybe it dissolved and disappeared. Now, a wave rises up. Many drops build energy, crest, then subside. The feeling of waves rolling through reminds us we are both: individuals holding different parts, and completely One. There is always this dance between individuality and unity. You and I must be two separate things in order to connect, but not so separate that we forget our unity. It is also important to remember that unity does not mean sameness. I cannot assume that what I experience is the same for somebody else. Can I really know what other people want or need? When we move an idea into the relative world—there is difference and there is choice.



The idea of making choices in the relative world made me wonder: when I take my idea of Utopia and put it into the world, does it cast a shadow? Does it necessarily create both Utopia and dystopia? Is there a possible world where the existence of light does not require darkness? But, really, who am I to say what is light and what is darkness? And what is it in me that wants to make darkness disappear? I think that the important thing is freedom and movement. We are not making choices for others or judging their lives, we are just making sure that everything has space to move so that it can find its part in the harmony. We create a possible world where all can be happy and free.



The body is the perfect instrument to negotiate any seeming binaries: self and other, individual and whole, utopia and dystopia. The skin—the point of contact--defines inner space and outer space, and its individual center connects to the center of everything. The feet are connected to the earth while the head reaches for the sky. Waves of emotion roll inside us and between us: deeply personal and universal, immediate and timeless.



A group of Buddhist practitioners participated in the Utopia workshops. They described the project as a big meditation on something beautiful. I am reminded of the Buddhist practice of compassionately holding everything. The feeling of loving life as perfect just as it is and there is always room to improve. That brings in the feeling that Utopia is an intention. The Buddhist group said that they were blown away that this intention was lived beyond the heart and off of the cushion—outside, in front of everyone. Henriette Brouwers said, “It is good to write about Utopia, but Utopia is something you imagine, not make manifest. Utopia, in definition, means nowhere, it is something that doesn’t exist, but it is something that we all long for. Utopia is more about an energy, and when you are moving, you are it. And also you become more than yourself. We all lived together for 15 minutes—both as individuals and as a community---living in harmony without loosing our individuality. And the feeling of losing one’s self is always what brings the conflicts in the world.”



So, how does one relate to connection without losing individuality? John Malpede said, “By learning to be a good improviser. If you are a lousy improviser, you’ll lose yourself in it, or you’ll stay too much yourself. If you are a good improviser you will find that balance.” The individual has a choice in how they participate in this ocean. They can choose which wave to follow, or maybe shift the tide. Like I said in the beginning, maybe some people are tired and they just ride where the waves take them. I talked with the women in my workshop about how lucky we are to be able to dream, to take the time and the energy to envision the new world. To choose which current we ride.



There are those who try to tell you… and there are those who teach by example.
Tony Parker falls into the latter category.
He teaches by example.
Through hard work and perseverance he has learned to walk the walk. His mission is spiritual in nature. His goal is to raise consciousness and give hope to people who have seemingly lost all hope. Tony Parker who was once one of the walking dead, by example, shows on a daily basis that there is indeed life after death.
Tony Parker is a man who decided to stop crawling, to get up, brush-off, stand strong and walk forward.
His mission in life…
--Tony Parker (workshop and LAPD theater group organizer)

Is the world split between Utopia and dystopia? Is there a line between healthy and sick? Sometimes I think there is, so I stop dancing and try to do something. I think: how dare I dance through poverty and war--probably my energy could be better spent! Funny thing is that dancing is exactly what’s needed. It is important that we figure out how to move free and awake and give others the right to do the same. Plus, maybe the body can heal the idea of a world divided and at odds. Maybe our cells hold the memory of the deep connection of everything, before I was different than you, were different than the earth.



Movement and stuckness. Moving fast, is there somewhere to go? Easychair and blue glow. Is there magic? Is there somewhere else to go? Is there more here than we know? Do I need you to see it? So I can see it---so we can see it. This mass. This density. Break it light as air so everything is true at once and everything is different. Somehow.
--Laura Fuller

Quotes from interview by Laura Fuller with John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers on November, 19th 2007, Santa Monica, CA, and from text generated by workshop participants and printed with their permission. Thank you.

Groups involved in creating the Utopian movement included: Para los Ninos, Downtown Women’s Center, Labor Center MacArthur Park, LA Community Action Network, Transition House, Drama Stage Qumran, LAMP, The Village, The Safe Haven, Saint Vincent’s Center, Midnight Mission, Skid Row 3 on 3 Basketball team, Buddhist Center Cloverdale, Brent Blair and USC students, Arianna MacBean and dancers, Tanya Kane-Parry and CalState LA students, Gillian McGinty’s intergenerational dance group, John Malpede, Janna Shadduck-Hernandez and Peter Sellar’s students from UCLA, the Youth Justice Coalition Free LA Charter High School, Cynthia Lee, Sukha, Laura Fuller, Jan Kain, Ron Allen.



“Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) creates performance work that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. LAPD is committed to creating high-quality, challenging performances that express the realities, hopes, and dreams of people who live and work in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, and is dedicated to building community and to the artistic and personal development of its members”. http://www.lapovertydept.org

part 1


Part 2

I would beg for blown glass at Disneyland, or whatever, or buy it at the glass show. I was running on the tredmill nest to Christine, seeing the tacky purple and clear of the 80's and the waxy opaque of the 40's, and having the visceral memory of having "my stuff thown around". And maybe I don't remember collecting, because, what wasn't broken, mostly was chipped. And I didn't want it broken. so I threw it away. And I also remember the heaviness of my bedroom furniture. the too thick and too dark wood. And that is why I have always been mad at Mollie. Yes---If only I took better care of my things....

It could also be true that I learned to not respect my things in that way. To not care, because it eventually will go. But mostly the response was just to keep going with whatever is still standing. And I truly believed that was normal. I remember the first time mollie bitched me out. She was criticizing my driving. She had directed me to turn down an ally to get to her place sooner. From her direction, I understood where I was trying to get, so I went around the block. The ally was too dark for me. She criticized me for wasting time, but we weren't even in a hurry. I told her it didnt matter, and she said my driving was always poor. I'm sure this is true. We took a driving trip once through the desert and she didnt bring her glasses so she couldnt do any of the driving. but she told me where to go.

Im starting to wonder that maybe my stuff gets broken--not because I need to take better care of it--but because someone threw it against the wall. That maybe my actions need to be more about getting my stuff my heart, whatever, away from people who don't hold it right.

I woke up this morning somehow shifted. For the first time in a while, not angry. Softened to Camilla and Ashley. Understanding something somehow and somehow compassion. There is somehow compassion in the ability to chose. the right to leave what doesnt feel good and find what does. I think so many people think that's impossible. something feeling good. So they try to control people who are unapologetically what they are. Stupid, blind, Imperfect and still going. Mollie never seemed comfortable with my emotions. and that's okay. We all choose the size of the world we live in and its rules.

Today, I somehow woke up to the mist I used to wake to. And memory of smells. and it just was. And to the anger so gently spread in little bits that it is no one's fault to hold it all; not even mine. And a softness that could be so easily smashed by any of those I softened to. So I need to stay away.

A few weeks ago, Jodi said she wondered what happened to all the money people owed. where is it floating? where does it go? That was after and Christian finally succeeded in taking so much, and all there was to do was let go. I know the same question has been asked a million times before in regard to socks. And I wondered it today in terms of people. Where does that love go? The love I had for Aaron--was it an illusion all along? did it disappear? Or Ashley; I listened to a song she used to play in class. Or the last time I was in New York and it was good, or watching movies on a laptop in mollies twin bed. where does it go.

Im sure you remember many places that no longer exist as though you could go there now. My mom's house. My grandma's house. Somehow Marisa's particular rooms stick in my mind, my grand aunts house in idaho that my uncle built. and its built basement and the smell of the room where I read the myth book when I was four. Stacy's car. As though you could just go back there now. And everything would be in place and everyone would be there. These places certainly exist somewhere.

And what about the things I dont remember? where do they go, till they come back in pieces? A lot has come up lately. I watched a movie about rape and how it scares away your spirit animal and how you have to show the village the heart of the predator in order for your animal to come back. And I cried because I knew the feeling of losing my spirit animal and losing the village and not being able to bring back the heart.

These things live somewhere that we can accidentally step back into. in invisible rivers or cycles that come back around. Where all the sudden you remember you get told you clay preference has been that way since you were 8 and you used to collect glass. and that some people where not what they seemed, and some people were more what they seemed than you could let yourself look at.

Alexithymia is when you don't have words for feelings. I felt that way for a long time. so I just stopped talking. Some people think it has to do with pre-verbal trauma. That powerful events that shaped your matrix for feeling happened before you had words. If nothing else, birth trauma---so, everyone has some. And probably death trauma as well. Under the surface, or floating above: the sense of unspeakable unknown. Our existence and non-existence. Some people get stuck there--in everything that doesnt have words.

After Alexithymia comes sublimation and projection...that is, if we are not simply paralyzed. we function by finding reasons for the feelings on the tips of our tongue. An explaination. A container for a fear that would be there anyways, but everyone has a symbol they then can avoid.And smaller---even minute to minute: Am I stressed out because I have all this stuff to do...or do I have all this stuff to do because I am stressed out?

maybe I *manifested* stressful things because I was tuned in to a stressful vibration. Or that my stressed out nervous system is looking for resolution from a long past stressful event: amp up again, fall apart, get hurtwhatever. maybe this time will be different.

regardless where it comes from, the feeling is real.... and even when we think we know the reason for what we feel, we are mistaken, or its just a piece. I gave angela permission to yell at aaron, because when I walked in, he was eating my honey with a spoon from a jar and there was avocado peel in the trash. Later, I discovered that it wasn't my avocado....there were others...so I wrote a note apologizing. Really I was angry because the other stuff he had let me down on. That we were probably going to lose the garden and for the bag of eggplants I gave him and he let rot. And for Christian who disrespected me everyday and had no way to understand what it was or how it hurt. It came down to a feeling of violation and no power. But it wasn't my avocado, so I shouldn't have accused him, but then I saw that he had eaten my cheese. Raw cheese, that he probably couldnt even tell the difference from other cheese. That would have lasted me two weeks, and he probably didn't even chew. And it was true: it seems that things are often taken by people who cannot understand the value of what it was.

But it didn't even matter, two days later, that whole world went away. But I keep asking it for justice. Such betrayal and loss again and again it seemed, but this time actually realized, NO its not me. That's fucked up. But why even bother. they cant hear. maybe I used to lose my voice, it was because I wouldnt stop talking to people who couldn't hear. So I told my mom I was angry, and brushed hard past Ashley. no safety and no home.
Again....

And all this present history came after I noticed that time was real. That time is not an illusion or a construct, it is a line right now, between everything that happened before and everything that hasn't happened yet. And that presence is standing at the edge of a cliff and truly seeing the void.

I heard that the decision to become a healer changes your chart. But probably any choice that is believed in and heard. Stepping out of karma, not in the sense of "no action". but in the uncoupling of past and future, the most important action of
the conscious choice
that now is not then.

In April, I saw a well renown psychic. He gave me what I needed to hear in order to run up a mountain and find yellow flowers, and finally be hungry again. He told me to leave Camilla and we wouldn't be friends. But most else he said has been wrong.

Like everything he said, he was my karma. Projections forced upon me by that moment, sure to change. Telling the future is actually just telling the present. A description of the current lens. That's the thing---the observer. As soon as you look upon the blue print, it is changed. I saw it. it changed me. and I changed it.

So, the battle at the brink. Can I stay empty. stand there and see nothing? or do I see what I have seen so many times before. Again with only a couple of things and no place to put them, or too many things in a mess. again angry at people who could never give justice? or something else?

not determined. as soon as I saw it. it changed. ....so, what does that do to *universal law*? it means the only law is choice. and it may take a million choices to slowly choose different. But now I meditate to a blackness in front of me. not thinking that the blackness is there to conceal. letting it be
simply black. imagining my choices to be free.

But still,
there are other people playing here, too
there are calls and warnings and a now to unwind
and sometimes:
I wonder why things are so heavy. The things that I should have the strength to move:
a door,
a computer,
my legs up the stairs.

I guess that's to say that everyone is on the path, and all roads lead to beauty.

I stopped suffering, and suddenly felt everything.

Put in the ground.

My aunt and my mom had been picking out paint colors for my mom’s new house when she paniced. Her mind can move forward, but her energy got froze in a trauma a long time ago. My aunt almost called me earlier in the day when my mom made the statement that “maybe she just wanted to paint everything beige”. When Camilla asked how she was, I said that she wanted to paint everything beige. Camilla said, that sounds like a nice simple idea. No, its not like that. Then Camilla said it was because she needed a partner to make that choice for her. No, its definitely not like that. I knew that it was simply one of those moments when you realize that happiness is going to be hard for a while…and, might it be easier to give up.

Ten years ago, my dad died. The house filled with people who talked about someone I never knew, and overflowed with food that no one ate. In the afternoon, I took my sister outside and we watered the baby plants that were growing in Dixie cups.

Nine years ago, to the day. We buried my teacher by hand in a simple and beautiful pine box. For three years from there, we brought stones. Eight year ago was my grandma, but she had really died ten years before. When she sucked on my aunts pearls, cussed, and packed her bag. Seven years ago was supposed to be me.

Last year. I crept close, across the room in a conversation that lasted six hours. I reached Camilla and set my arm near hers in the space before touch. Where hairs stand on end, and you feel the magnet push or pull and bounce off its poles, until she pulled away, and I slid away to the wall where I had been leaning before. We had a silent conversation and negotiation of the space between until she walked me down at 2am. She said I could stay on the day bed, if I wanted, or did I want to go? And I was the one who tried to touch her, so, of course I did not know what to say. She started boiling water and said, “I can make you black tea if you are going to drive home, or camomille, if you want to stay”. I hadn’t answered, but she was bringing the cup that contained the choice. When I tasted it, it was plain, hot water.

Put in the ground.

But it’s hard to remember 3 days ago. I guess I had gone to work and then to my mom’s old house where everything was packed and I got stuck there too long because my grandparents showed up. and my grandpa handed me $50. Jodi said she was leaving beet seedlings outside my door because they were getting too big for the pot. plus my stuff. And there was a chime wrapped in this tissue I saw many months ago and her print and a skull. A skull, and I started to cry. Aaron read my cards and I felt blessed by the big picture and getting to watch it unfold. It was good to just be there; I had been judging myself to the point where I couldn’t feel anything.

So, in the few days before, I kept having this physical sensation of being torn open at my heart and I was actually feeling things for the first time, because I was finally not feeling them too much. I had felt my pain for years and years, my pain, and cried sometimes for months and sometimes raged, not for the reasons you’d think; and I had felt my dad’s pain and his lungs filled with liquid and compression and heaviness and closed off and black. But I had never felt it all at once with eyes wide open and not wanting to make it any different than it was. And on Friday, I had also cried for Camilla. Cried hard that her body was no longer my temple. She was still a goddess, but I would no longer lay at her feet. I took the beets and was so glad to have something to put in the ground. On Sunday, I wasn’t sure if I was avoiding my family. My mom called to check if I was okay and I was. By then I was very alone and I had meant to be alone, I was maybe gonna throw bread in the ocean or something, but I didn’t.

I remember when I was like 7, and Tracy and I were sitting outside by my grandma’s jaccuzzi, looking at the stars. I couldn’t even tell if she was awake. Steam swirled from her skin, but she seemed deep inside. She was something I did not know. I asked, “are you awake…what are you doing?” She said, “I’m not doing anything, I’m contented”. That was the first time heard that word spoke and certainly the first time I’d seen it done. But we are transfixed in its constellations. Held perfectly by the stars; how could I have forgot? When I was 3, I remember very consciously making a vow that I wanted to see truth. Commitment to see the true nature of reality, and whatever that would take. And I let it be hard. In recent years, I have studied that true nature is bliss. And this new life started with a vow of happiness. And it is still hard. It is peeling away, but now I know for sure what the poison’s for.

So, the Holy Basil plant I bought from Amma did not do well in the time I was in New York and that’s okay. Amma told us that you had to put things in the ground. That you have to burry them in the dirt so they can root. You burry a seed for life just as you burry a dead body…but for some reason we think they are two different acts. Wee need to keep laying things down and surrendering to what is until we hold no agenda and are present. And then serve…and then comes grace.

It is terribly depressing to be cleaning #10 and moving back in. But I guess there is a reason I need to clean so much gross stuff. And shuffle shit. And feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. Anaswara was tired on wednesday, I could have asked her if she needed a sub, not to assume she even would have let me, but maybe it could have been my “big break” but I wanted to go to Noah’s meditation. And Camilla wanted me to come to her, and I engaged with her and missed the call from my aunt that told me to come to my mom. So I went to class, and sat the whole time on the edge of a tear, jfeeling a new meditation after ten years, and having compassion for all that came up. As I drove to my mom afterwards, I was not afraid. My breath is not long, but its fine. I wonder if anyone’s heart is okay. I have been told that mine is strong and I have wondered before if its too strong. But now I know that it can be broken and still beat. I think that a lot of the work I do is showing people that what they thought was death is not the end. And, for myself, when I asked for happiness, what came up was a situation that would make it easy to judge myself, to stop myself, to follow a law. It’s all medicine. Exactly what I thought was the end.

driving late at night. I had completed the impulse to walk and keep walking. and I hope with an open heart.
I blew white light for myself--for the first time. It rushed from the pit of my stomach and the center of the earth. and I was surprised to feel it hit my skin like glitter.

When the client was sitting, watching what came up around the breath. hunger. feeling that there might not be enough. I gave the example that the daemons may be with you. he may sit in the passenger seat and taunt you. he may demand you buy him ice cream. And you can buy him ice cream. so long as you are driving. the deep knowing, the place beyond hunger and fear must hold the wheel.

for the first time, she breathed calmly though her nose, the most amazing thing. I remember this as my chest rise and fall. calm but aching with a pain that has no location. he strangest kind. alone. I feel my pulse also--through my throat to my forehead and feel the edge of each beat when the heart empties. the terror-wonder of existence: that it must empty, you imagine it
squeezed in a spiral; wrung. are its edges faintly tacky-sticky?
might it get stuck closed or will the next vaccum come?
the first time I had anxiety was when I was twelve. the red line just opened and we were gonna ride it to olvera street. in the morning, I was simply aware that I was different. A understanding of mortality that you can never get back. the first time you are aware that your heart empties....I remember many years when I had to remember each breath. I wondered, was it the butter on my toast? it did taste saltier than usual, or maybe I was poisoned. those things did not sound reasonable, but then again, no explaination did.

I first got interested in blood about ten years ago, when I did live blood analysis. and am endlessly intrigued by blue blood bled red. one of the few things Im sure of right now, is that I want to learn how to stick a vein. how to see through the flesh and pass through the eye of the needle.

On new years eve, we were building a lodge for a sweat. Camilla helped take to old lodge down and I went to cut willow from the river. I was to take off the excess branches and follow the line of the bough, for 8 boughs. I got to my 8th and was stuck: I didnt know what branch to follow---which was the main line? I asked, and andrew said--its not the straightest, its the strongest.

This is true for veins as well. this same thing was told to me again. "its not the straightest, its the strongest"

I teach this in focus--refining the literal flow of energy. cutting ties, repairing leaks, refining, down to a laser point, and making the pathways efficient.

for a few months, "its not the straightest but the strongest", I went along looking to be pruned, until I had another question. both forks of the vein were strong, but there were valves near by... the answer, you dont have to choose. go in, at the "v", right at the fork. self imposed limitations, there was another answer.

I have this deep sense that its all gonna be okay. I wonder if Im being a romantic and shouldnt be more pragmatic. I dont understand why she is so far away right now. I dont know if there is not another option that I just havent seen. Looking for balance in the mean time. it the inbetween, the balance of two. the endless xeno between where you each come from and where you together are going. in the mean. Is it because she didnt like her dinner? or because I worked all day? again. belief--without proof. without proof to contradict. belief--hope--beyond understanding that. its
gonna
be alright.

1. Its okay if you flinch, you don't need to apologize
2. the memory you dont have
3. the canary flies into the cave
4. the emptiness that contains everything
5. breathe in an iceblue sunrise sky
6. fall back to move forward
7. light snake spirals up my spine
8. red blood in my heart.
9. her ocean
10. her fire
11. keep reaching keep reaching
12. a battle cry.
13. endless chances
14.

I still dont understand this body. I keep finding different ways to look. how do I heal each organ, each story. I hold a toe and see a blonde girl with pony tails. what does it mean that I can look? details to wind through, for what? some times my view narrows and I think its a closed system--un inter ested and tired. But then each time I put one hand on someones chest and the other on their back. I freak out with the knowledge that I dont get it. how could someone's heart be between my hands?

How could that be?

There is also something about order in movement. structure and sequence, something about gravity and turning the plant to face the sun. This is the most intense time of year. Something about slowness and darkness and earth. And something about speed.

Mercury could be everywhere at once because he was so fast. He was fast enough that there was no space between impulse and action. they are the same to him. and he stays clean and honest because nothing could build up and there could be no comparison: now to then here to there, whatever. I bet he doesn't know what movement is. He wouldn't be able to understand true or false. He just is.

They then brought in Brenda Dixon-Gottschild to give a talk. I can imagine that woman lecturing to that group of 18 year-old girls with blond pony-tails. I'm trying to discern whether that image is simply frustrating, or out-right patronizing. Is it a case of too-little-too-late, or yet another appropriation.

Appropriation or Citation?

The distinction between citation and appropriation was made to sound important at WAC (second only to the stress placed on the concept of liminality
...hmmm). Apparently, what makes the difference in terminology is power balance. Under that definition, white person could never cite African dance (even if they were from Africa), a black person could never appropriate ballet (even if they were trained in Russia). A man appropriates a skirt while a woman cites a tie.

This conversation would get frustrating. It is similar to being told that a person of non-dominant race could never be racist (only prejudiced) and a woman could never be sexist. When engaged with it, it is hard to see how the naming of vocabulary words for specific situations and combinations would help when it seems to be a gut-level response of okay or no-okay...

Somethings are racist, somethings are not. Somethings are negligent and totally ignorant of context and history and somethings are not. Problem with requesting this more subtle discernment is that it takes knowledge of the context and self-awareness of one's position in it. No. We can not assume gut-level understanding that black face would not be appropriate. In fact, there are many things going on in the world that I would like to imagine that people would gut-level feel to be inappropriate, but they don't. Bit by bit, whatever barometer that I would have liked to assume has gotten twisted. That is, assuming it ever existed at all.

I just want to dance!
thing is, we defend our patterns. We identify with them and so think that if a pattern dies, we do. Dance is learning by practice. Repetition. Sometimes I watch people practice, refining their habits and imagine them literally twirling, screwing a hole deeper into the ground. And they are. they are mapping their brain and moving energy through the culture. form follows.

the little girl grows up pointing her toe because: she was told to point her toe. she does not understand context of that pointed toe--and why should she? Its pretty) by the time she gets to college she wants to point her toe. perhaps she couldnt unpoint it if she wanted to.

she points her toe, she kicks her leg, she bevels foot. because she always has, because her sister did.

she choreographs ABAC, left to right, open hip, pas de deux. because they are elements of form? because this is simply the way thing are? just the way the universe works.

dykie
Im not dykie. but I feel dykie in ballet. Ballet is about passing as corps. I do not pass.
(granted, I love to take ballet, but I take the early in the day classes with the old ladies and transvestites.)

men and women in dance
I think. that one of the reasons the grooves got so deep is that. Despite the 2 decades of Identity based performance art. is that Women are ensemble. Of course there is principal, but she is principal because she was the best corps (she was so good at being unison that she became stand out). Then, there is one man. Very tribal. One man, what....18 women. He is an individual. a character. they are unison.

okay, thats all obvious and hardly relevent. the only thing it explains is the larger-than-life qualityty of male dancers (opinion , of course) they are all the only one on stage.

Right now, here's the weird thing--- somehow it is curently "subversive" or something to choreograph using all men. Subversive, because we are used to seeing all women. some see it as a power balancing...but thats a power balancing that rests on the structure of a huger power imbalance. could it really be subversive to fill a stage with men? and, by the way, they are not in unison.

Empirical

of course I dont even want to draw such lines as okay/not-okay. how do you even talk about it? moving forward. moving to something else. maybe better, maybe, but at least something else.

eek. "forward" there's another line. (as opposed to backwards). something like locomotor as opposed to axial. are you moving in one place, or traveling? not about the destination, but the traveling. strip it down and its not nothing. is that true? does that mean essence? take away all your movement habits. Will you be still?

Samuel Beckett

some people say that Samuel Beckett was a pessimist about the human condition. Others think that anyone who thinks he's a pessimist, is a character trapped in a beckett play. That is to say, he was pessimistic of the structures we have created, not life itself. life is not the same as our current condition. we are more than this moment.

some people cant imagine doing it any other way.

"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more" (s.b.)

In conclusion
Maria is doing a dance based on a Samuel Beckett. In a boxing ring. I would love to fight in that ring.
I will be doing Maria's taxes.

Less and less. I am learning not to let her cupboards snap shut. But maybe once out of every 10. .. And probably I will always wear my keys loud and sometimes set a cup down hard. Just because the surface rises faster than it should.

when the cupboard snaps shut, im not mad. Its a very primitive feedback loop ran by some part of me that needs to know that it exists. Like a baby, I throw the spoon and it drops to the ground. impact. gravity. effect: you pick it up. I throw it again. Its a part of me that needs to know: The game is that simple.

The negative pole of earth is fear. If I throw this spoon, will it really fall? Is gravity deep enough to count on? The positive pole of earth is either trust or faith, depending on who you ask. "Mr. Fuller" is the name given to my Capricorn moon. It is the part of me that is "worse than a man" is also the part of me that stops my addictions. it is discipline that lets me hold the sky. That is the trust that comes from earth. But if earth is in fear, it smashes the sky. it leaves no room. it is dense. so dense. because its afraid of its light. it doesn't want to float away. It wants to exist. It wants to exist. It wants to exist. It wants to exist.

She held me and shook me. The counter rose up to hit my cup hard. Yelling is never a question of volume. I let go of the spoon and it fell to the floor. So much worry and uncertainty just because things have to break to change. the old world has to slip so that things can dance again. And everyday. I think of silly things that have never worried me before and if I take half a step back, don't worry me now. and then I lead a yoga class and cry for bliss. cry for re-membering. Touch someone in savasana; touch my palms together, and cry.

Let me tell you about the real Mr. Fuller. He worried so much that he forget to believe, and it made him want to die. He thought that things existed in ways that they don't . He thought this world was important in ways that it wasn't. in this way, one gets to the point where everything is so bound its empty, until the point that it doesn't exist at all. (he did not understand Shunyata!) guess what, he's dead. That body, at least, it could have been used in the time it had. I don't think anything can be wasted. He did what he had to do. but, physically and spiritually he ran in circles. he forgot to trust. Truth is, I think he really deeply believed, he was just to afraid to go where belief would have taken him. I don't want to be like him.

I don't think tears always mean sadness. You have heard of tears of joy. However, certainly they are cleaning something--they are not the bliss of that moment. They are the dripping away of all of the times I forgot to be here The awareness that I had ever been anywhere other bliss. We must engage. We must dance. But we must remember to come back, to dissolve. to shake each other until we cry. or else we turn to stone.

Look forward.

what is this?
this thing that is so clear: this thing.
"Thing" say, "thing" that is such a weak word
so who will tell an other?
This thing is here on the tip of your tongue
or, cough it up from the back of your throat
and, awaiting interpretation
can you hold it
quiver in your hand? this thing.
Is it a concrete house in the city?
Is it walking distance from the same day you go everyday?
Is it just enough not to cry
and then more of the same?
or is it something else,
this thing.
Could it be that you lay on the ground
and see the veins of the tree? this thing,
it burst into tears on the freeway
wondering what note finally let it free.
what word on the phone
what bump in the texture of the steering wheel
what wave in the ocean cracked this thing open
which breath, which sigh, which time she cried
this thing

18: There is a bed in the back of the car but she does not lie down. I talked to michael walker on the phone and that made me deeply happy. I listened to the same regina specktor song 6 times. The monkey mind was powerful and funny if we gave it an inch of distance. The ocean was the color of my sister's eyes when she was a baby. last night, Jack drunk dialed me and I let it go to voice mail (how does one get off of a drunk dial list?). This morning was a very long time ago...now, would you have my baby? Yes.

19. I met a dark entity doing bodywork and was afraid. I dont get afraid. Camilla and I talked about what is an "entity". what is A "constellation".

We ate dark chocolate with marzipan. When ever we do this, I am reminded of an Aimee Bender

story, I think in "girl with the flammable skirt". I dont know what story it is or what the story is about. That's what I love about Aimee bender. I remember her stories somewhere deep inside me, but never remember; what happened. the characters. or anything at all.

20: I went to my mom's birthday party. It was a scene from a John Waters movie, but no sex or nudity. it was done up like a wedding-baby-shower-birthday-halloween party. it was the opposite of classy. my mom seems both too old and too young. Embracing old-age and teenage when neither should fit. I never know what to do with this. There were bubbles. The teenagers look like we feel. My aunt said, "no stories?" "none that I can tell now". I asked my mom, "are you happy?" yes.

21: I went to my house to find the Aimee Bender book. I realized I never owned it. I remembered another scene from another Aimee Bender book where the character couldn't tolerate anything with more than two steps involved. I feel like this most the time. The character was so hungry and so overwhelmed that she took soap from under the sink and peeled slices off to eat. she ate the whole bar. it seemed like the easiest most logical thing to do in th moment. I drove home fantasizing about eating soap.

22. I played clay at the autistic school. I saw Vic and Emmet at whole foods. I made fried rice with cranberry sauce. death hangs in the air.

23. I ordered the book off amazon. I am very aware of crows.

24. the email said my order shipped

25. I am shifting from the signifier to the signified. in ordering this book, these are no longer words for their own sake, not even caring anymore if it is possible to have a symbol with out a reference. In fact, probably caring too much. You see, these coconuts, they are not like other coconuts. These coconuts already know before I buy them that they are not good enough. That, okay, maybe they are good enough, but that they will never be enough. These coconuts know, before they even try. And this isn't a sad thing at all. It is okay.

26. I got really sick.

27. "marzipan" is about letting go. rather, about not letting go and of being held onto. Contrary to often, I very much remember the end: the girl asking to be excused from the table. receiving no answer, she stays.

28. I walked outside and my plants were gone. the pots were there, but the plants were gone. At first I thought that Aaron had gotten the plumbers to come and that, in the spirit of everything "robert", they had been destroyed. but the trelace was gone and there were no roots or leaves or spilled dirt. in fact, it was more like the plants had never grown at all.

29. Girl number one thinks she is very smart. Girl number two agrees. One and Two sit behind Three, who cannot see them, but listens. One talks fast and projects like a lecturer, though her voice is tiny and light and probably wearing a baby-T. Two pauses One and repeats her three foundations, slowly, not to miss anything. It is an interview. One is special. One sits just behind Three, so Three can’t see if One is looking. But One is psychic anyways.

30. there are marzipan pears on the table. but they are real pears, not marzipan. the kind that marzipan--carefully formed and painted---can look like. but they are not marzipan. they are pears. I am in not-quite-so-much-pain now. Tomorrow, I will wash my hair and this will be done.

All pain is stagnant blood. Stagnation. Something stopped. Really, the pain is the friction. The space between. Something that is moving and something that is still. The gap is the difference in speed and the game of catch-up we play with ourselves. If everything was still, or if everything was moving, there would be no friction, there would be no pain. This is not for the sleeping, nor for the awake. This is for those in the waking shadows. Wishing to be blessed by the old world and embraced by the new. Wishing for ease. No. Here’s to the gap. I ask only to laugh through the tears. This is the pain of waking up.

So. You have gone beyond your wildest dreams in unexpected ways. What now? There is a sense in which success must stay as deeply rooted as it always has been AND there is a sense in which it must be redefined. Don’t worry. It can be both at once: in deep integrity and service and BIGGER. So, (sew, sew, sew….) what do you want?

We are [just] densified energy. Brought down to form; a condensed bundle of the same stuff as everything—solidified, slowed down. Until it almost looks still
In what seems static to this form, our nature
Once released, it is back to flow with everything
That is also free, until it condenses—is again brought down to form.

Just as our cells (and this is just for linear time) are the same cells of generations before when you take it down to the atoms. Thought absolutely not recognizable. So with energy.
And in some ways recognizable, as these bit do carry resonance of what they have been and what they are becoming.

And when it seems recognizable, it can get personal. And sometimes, with personal, can come judgement and then karma in punative and reincarnation is substitute for dogma. And this moment can become just another bit of math for you to measure yourself against.

I remember accidentally having a conversation with my mom where I started relating non-violence to non-duality. I found myself doing a reread of the asention of Christ as his entrance into unity consciousness. That was the stupidest conversation ever. I remember going back to my family and having to remind myself to hide because that’s not what I do in normal life. I remember being confused by the rolling of professional stress conversation into no PDA (twice this sequence happened). And its true. Its all true. I remember asking for more abundance and having 3,000 come in today and thinking, chicken scratch, right? My bar is raised. And timelessness crashes against finitude, and timelines and there is something to do here, there is something to do.

Goddess of duality. The secret to magic is truth and truth is change. That basically means that if you let something come to full expression full truth, then it moves forward. In a reality that seems that the only constant is change, there is then a constant. We have to remember the sacred unknown, and the fact that, through truth, we choose to step into that never know. No constant.

Non-duality does not mean One. In means forever embracing the two. The way to knowledge is not through logic, but through paradox—through stimulating both sides at once.

In quantum consciousness, a lot of attention is placed on the observer. That if the tree fell, and no body was there to see it, did it make a sound….did it even fall at all? This perspective and the spiritual materialism that sometimes follows is an expression of esoteric philosophy through a lens that values doing. Universal law is seen as requiring my personal participation. But the truth is that Law exists whether I am there or not. Whether I am in a position to notice it of not. This same breath that turns the oceans was blowing before I was born and will keep blowing long after I die. Love exists whether I feel it or not. It is not a question of the existence of healing, abundance, free-will or love. These simply exist as universal law. It is a question of participation. What we have, or must have, is willingness.

The universe said "yes" to us. It breathed us. We choose to say "yes" back.

You said to me, we do not have to try. Our connection is built in the structure. In the stars. You can pour weight through your bones. You can let go. There is so much diversity here. From without and within. Adversity could be on the table. I have not dreamed past this point. I have not written this yet. Respect the other. Respect the other. Yoga, and the opposite of yoga. There has to be one AND two. Or else there is no contact.

It is not what the mind can think or the heart can feel. It is what the heart and mind can do together. And it is what the heart and mind can do in linking to other hearts and minds. Our participation in the whole by the quality of each breath.

He never said so, but my dad loved this song. It played at my grandparents big anniversary party. One of the parties that people plan before they get too old and their friends can’t dance. The celebrations of a Joy that also holds the tone of inevitable loss and the knowing, never-knowing of when it will go. Did you ever sing amazing grace in a hospital room? Did you ever run at the beach at night? Did you ever put something away for safe keeping and never see it again? See it again. Did you run as fast as you could to catch you plane or train and jump on it? Did you catch it? Did you find it? Do you see it now?

We all know fucking everything, but forget in strange chunks. For a moment, we remember the past and wonder where it went. It seems so clear that nothing is changed. That we are right there forever and then we flash back to now, and, “oh”. And oh. Oh. Oh! My god. I remember, Now is not then. Now I am somewhere I almost still cant believe. And oh, you ask me again, Where I Came From? I was always here. In passing, in waking, in running, in crossing. In this blur. there are moments when we catch an eye. And a piece of it holds on forever.

We sweat it out. We cry it out. We scream it out and fight it out. We pass it out in electric jolts that ripple through time and space. Did you ever not know the difference between your sweat and you tears? Did you ever taste your own blood? Were you ever afraid to? Did you ever have a memory that wasn’t yours? Did you ever forget what it was but still feel it? Were you ever afraid? I sweat it out. I cry it out. I fight it out. I pass it out in electric jolts that ripple through time and space. Did you ever scream “NO” at the top of your lungs and nobody listened? Did you ever scream “NO” and they did? Did you ever, say “no” when you mean “yes”. “Yes” yes! Before its too late. And you smell someone’s regret. And we taste each other’s grief. And we dip trembling finger tips into the center of everything and touch the pulse strip naked God. And trembling eyes. Look to finally see. And be. In all the joy and pain.

Did you ever lose everything and say “thank you”? Did you ever get given more than you ever thought possible, and say “thank you” for this as well? Did you ever get whispered that healing is balance? That balance is not still, but is everywhere and everything at once? Did you ever get pleasure to balance your pain? Get held for the times that you were left alone? Did you ever feel a separation melt? Did you ever watch a fear disappear? Did you ever feel the universe expanding. Slowly. Big enough. To hold. Everything at once? Have you ever been told something you couldn’t understand? Have you ever sat at the oceans edge and felt yourself flying? Were you ever given a gift that you did not think you deserved? Have you ever listened to the same song twice? Did you ever eat vanilla ice cream rolled in Quick? Have you ever picked an apple from a tree? Have you ever picked a flower from the same bush everyday and given it to the same person? Have you ever fallen to the ground—laughing or crying or anything at all—and then actually noticed where you were at. Did you decide to stay there just a moment more? Did you remember to say “thanks”? did you remember to stay in it? Did you remember everything that came before? And everything yet to come?

And so you land in the moment. Naked and shaking and fearless. And thankful and empty and wondering and full. Wound and unwinding. Wounded and worn and pure. And so you land in this moment ever changing.