DANCEMEDITATION

In yoga, inversion means upside down. In dance, it means taking the way a dancer characterizes a motion and doing its opposite: my arm reaches high in the front, so perhaps a leg might reach low in back.

This sounds dull. Today I played Bach and did inversion upon inversion, and it was not at all dull.

A harpsichord plucks precisely becasue it has no lingering. No sustain, as musicians say. I love this––the need to play note after note in order to keep sound pouring into space. Today the music’s insistence dug inversions out of me. My body scratched and crosshatched the space above my rug, music rubbing visibility out of invisibility. When I finished, I rested in my summer sweat as the music dribbled softly on. Until it stopped sharp, on a stroke.

Mogadra. Kale. Chard.
Happiness. Wide gaze. Full breath.

Home now, eating ripe mulberries from the trees in the park, watching ducks silhouetted against the low tide mud flats I realize that when I am happy, I am embodied. Embodiment is the fundmental element in happiness.

In the day’s waning light, a fox with her dinner–– a small duck hanging limply in her jaw––trots towards marsh grass to eat in privacy. NYC’s skyline is a purple cutout in the distance.

I see.
My feet on the wooden bridge see.
My breath sees. Wide wide gaze. Peace.

A dancer friend just wrote to me that, at 60, she is rewiring herself.
Rewiring––a good way of putting it. It seems to happen every decade or so––I search for my new body, and that new body is truly new…The sense of my mind stays the same, but my body moves right along. Is this why humanity so often wants to identify with thoughts and is keen to cast off the body, which is forever shifting?

This is my last day before the Summer Movement Monastery begins. I shift a big notch inward during the days of intensive retreat. As normal daily life spins faster and faster into information, the more I cherish this tiny oasis carved out with other Dancemeditators to gather our bodies in space, in wordless-ness, free of computers for seven hours each day. We push back projects and accomplishments, and let the juice of unconsious unwinding, re-wiring, and creation happen free from the need to constantly manifest.

I’m also nervous. And I don’t know why…