New Year, Beginnings
[my bare feet again, standing on amazingly textured brown sand. I took this photo on one of my first days in Australia, and have since had two glorious ocean swims]
Oh goodness, friends. I haven't written for so long and I want to fill you in on everything - I want to share and process and brainstorm and have one of those extensive intricate chats while snuggling and drinking tea and cooking food together. There are so many people in the world that I love and miss, it's ridiculous. My heart is stretched out. It's a comfort to write here, imagining my words tendriling across the world and into the computers of some of you out there.
I'll start where I am, which is as good a place to start as any. I'm sitting in a garden in on a white painted bench in Adelaide, Australia. It's dry and breezy – so different from humid, dense Brisbane which was always humming with insects and water. Three black chickens pick through the dirt and chuckle softly, my body aches a little with lingering sea-salt and airplane air-con from yesterday. I am exhausted and content, savoring this quiet moment in transition from one thing to the next. I've just finished a 3-week intensive in Clown & Shakespeare, which turned out to be the perfect way to start a new year and rekindle my passion for this project – it was the most structured and intense three weeks I've had in six months. Which was amazing. (I forgot that I thrive in that!). The work was deeply embodied and profoundly physical in a way that pushed me more than ever to love and appreciate this wild little body I call home. As with all great learning, I also became aware of how woefully unaware I am, how little I know and how much I have to learn, how much work there is to do – and also how draining, disorienting, confusing, technical, soulful, exhilarating, and empowering that work can be! Above all it encouraged me to cultivate ownership of my body, voice, art, humor, work, projects, play, failures, successes, learning, life. An incredible gift (thank you Ira Seidenstein and my Quantum Clown Residency peers)! Perhaps I'll create some more directed/thematic posts on that experience in the future.
Today I'm turning to what's next – gonna look for a map, get some food, get ready for some dance explorations this week (also attending a Maestro here on Wednesday – which I haven't seen in such a while! Looking forward to that!), and read up on Fringe listings to figure out how to spend my time here. The open-endedness of the Watson has asked me to improvise in so many ways this year, and I admit that sometimes the blank-page pressure has gotten the better of me. At almost any given moment I don't know what I'm doing next. Improvisation and life ask me been to settle into that blankness, enjoy the moment of emptiness and uncertainty before something begins, allow what's there to be there and trust that what will come will come. I'm trying to breathe into the very real fear that comes from being in the moment (people talk about “being in the moment” as this easy breezy way of being, but actually it is fucking terrifying), and cultivate some sense of stillness, calm, energy, and trust inside it. And also to learn the complimentary skill of being present enough to notice what's happening, as well as alive and alert enough to ACT ON IT!
My camera is broken and I've desperately wanted to take photos this past week – so much beauty. Pink-purple sky clouded with bats, goofs in clown cozzies, swimming holes and gnarled trees and beehives speckled with watery light, bodies in ordinary and extraordinary motion – so much beauty.
Oh also I have a New Year's Resolution in three parts:
PRACTICE, PROCESS, PRESENCE.
