BIG F, little me

A balloon bumps up against the ceiling one late afternoon

...or to say it another way...here's another meditation on fear...

“Okay. I hear you.”

“You go first, please.”

“Just jump.”

“You go.”

“I can’t let go.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t have enough information.”

“I heard you the first time.”

(Pause.)

“I’ll be gone soon.”

(Pause.)

“That’s so morbid.”

(Pause.)

“Well…yeah.”

(Pause.)

“Can it be joyful?”

“What?”

“This living until we die?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“You go.”

“Show me.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t have time.”

“I am too far.”

“I am too old.”

“Dammit.”

(Pause.)

“I see.”

(Pause.)

“You look uncomfortable.”

“I can tell you’re not breathing.”

“I’ll be alright.”

(Pause.)

“Let’s take hands.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’m serious.”

“Gross.”

“Peace. I only mean peace.”

“I don’t touch anyone anymore.”

“Okay, nevermind.”

“That was your chance.”

“Dammit.”

(Sigh.)

(Thought bubble. Blank slate.)

“Let’s strip it down.”

(Starts undressing.)

“Oh.”

(Pause.)

“Is this the part where we shed all the layers and stand here naked and you think we all have an epiphany?”

“No. Oh I see what you mean.”

“Should we go back to the hand-holding?”

“Nevermind.”

“Okay.”

“You know, we should do this more often.”

“I’ve lost my touch.”

“You’ve got it.”

moving within fear

Artwork by a young Brooklyn YMCA member.

“When we bring presence to fear…we find within the fear itself the very juice that frees us.”

                                                                                                          -Tara Brach

For the last year, I’ve been living in fear—not running for my life, but swimming inside the causes and effects of being afraid. In my life, in my relationships, in my writing, in my dancing, I had been grappling with the idea fear. My obsessive compulsive stove-checking, second-guessing and general malaise came to a head and I came to a crossroads. I had to talk about it, to flesh it out, literally. 

A year ago, I was invited to teach some dance classes at Bucknell, my alma mater. I immediately felt the pressure to teach pitch-perfect classes with stunning heart-rate-raising arcs and masterful, professional choreography. I thought about attempting that. But then I looked at how I was actually teaching my current yoga classes. I found that what fed me fed my students; what my body needed seemed to be what they needed. My gift wasn’t in planning pristine exercises but in spontaneously and intuitively riding moments with the people in a class on any given day. So, I decided to teach dance the way I teach yoga. The playlist plays. I feel. I teach. When I arrived at Bucknell, I had been humbled by my years in Delaware and my empty resume. I had no alumni tales of glory, just my voice. I decided not to hide it. I pressed play and we took it from there. We continuously moved. As the students matched movement to breath, I spoke to them from my notes and my heart about fear and “holding the space.” I allowed myself to teach from the heart. The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer echoed in my head. 

Below is a compilation of my notes on fear that I’ve shared with classes and have used as jumping off points in choreography. 

Fear has been on my mind. I’ve been noticing my build-up of fear over the years. Like residue.

Habits, distraction. More habits, more distraction. I’m ignoring the fear, letting it fester. But when it finally taps me on the shoulder (or punches me in the face), I start looking for escape valves and ways to decompress.

We move away from fear as a way to soothe, protect, find refuge, soothe our nervous system.

But acknowledging it can lead to greater freedom. It’s not even about moving through it (I don’t know what that means), but it’s about moving within it. That’s where the dance comes in…literally move around in it. Exhale curl in, in, in. Hollow out, empty. Move with it, because of it. Be next to it, moving maybe forward, maybe zig-zag. Maybe ‘round and ‘round in circles, my favorite. 

So, when I can’t look away anymore, I look in. I lie down on a wood floor and slowly move my arms and legs. Snow angels. Heel rocks. Inch-worming along. This is me up against the hard surface. Supported by it. What’s happening? Hey, breath is always here. I can always drop in. Oh yeah.

Fear is overwhelming when it’s nameless, when I don’t dare take a look. What are my options? Hide under the blanket. Do battle. Embody it.

“I am afraid.”

There, I said it. I’ll have to say it so many more times forever. Let’s dance. Dancing is my safe zone for working with fear. I dare myself out on the floor. Or I surrender. I don’t have a choice. The floor hasn’t opened up yet, I haven’t fallen through. It says, “I’m here.”

When I do things I’m afraid of, I move out (of myself, of the shallow end). I can converse with fear. “Hey, buddy. Did you see that Marina Abramovic documentary? Cool. Me, too.” 

I am afraid of injury. I am afraid you’ll think I’m a fraud. I am afraid you’ll get to know me and then not want to know me. I am afraid of never finding what I’m for. I am afraid of not fully living. I am afraid of money. I am afraid of fear. I am afraid of dogs dying. I am afraid I won’t ever feel like myself again. I am afraid I’m too old. I am afraid I look young. I fear newness, I fear boldness. I fear I’ll never finish this dance. I’m afraid of hitting “publish.” 

What’s the worst that can happen? My dreams are always worse that reality. I have terrible stress dreams of out of control classes. I’m up in front and no one is listening. People walk out, they walk all over me. I get worked up, I start to scream. I lose it. 

That has really never happened.

I can work with this. I can connect to what is real and ever-present—the part of me that remains unchanged, essential. First, breathe. Second, breathe. Hey, keep breathing.

Natalie Goldberg and her writing about writing is teaching me to say a “holy yes to the real things in our life as they exist.”

What you might find at City Lights in San Francisco

waking day scenes and low flying nights

I woke from a dream on the couch in the old farmhouse on Putnam Park Road. I felt alone, but not lonely in the way you do at four years old--everything being one small world looking out from your own two eyes. I glazed through those first waking breaths, intimate with the air, the surrounding stuffed animals, the shaggy rug, the windows. Blinking, total zen at four. I woke from a nap, but I wasn't a napper. In those dreamy post-toddler, pre-kindergarten days (the thick soup of being, seeing, eating and teaching stuffed bears to fly), I felt for the first time no separation between waking and dreaming. The TV was on. Was I watching it when I fell asleep? Did I push a button (click) down on the rickety box and change the channel? Rabbit ears and all that lording over the set.

An animated scene unfolded inside the frame, barely in color. A child (or two? a bear?) was stopping up a dam. Buckets, hands. Stopping up all the holes slowly, meditatively in that wordless zen of Sesame Street that understood dreamtime and kidtime and the dis-logic of the passage of time and the adult ponderings of a child's mind and beginner minds and the expansiveness of small, simple things. Just this. Plug that dam. All else will drip away. Maybe there was music? A low hum. Pre-speech murmurings.

Strange, recurring dreams sweet-haunted my nights. A treacherous muppet monster loomed large looking for my Halloween candy while I hid under the red deck. His trademark fur floated like a grey feather halo as he lurched, eyes as big as saucers-if-they-were-sleds darting side to side. Or swimming in a neighbor's pond, we would slide out of the water missing limbs. When I wasn't crouched and hiding or dreaming of accidental dismemberment, I was flying. My heart rate would raise all the same. There was something bleak in the flight...a limited joy, a one day pass.

Here is the scene. I am in a long, low-ceilinged room with Bert and Ernie, two of my few points of reference in my thick, post-toddler, sensory stew. Here is the deal. The back door opens onto an endless grassy field that slopes ever downward. Bert and Ernie are neither benign nor malicious. They just were. They showed me how to step out the back door and fly, lowly, over the grass hill until the power wore off. Or they just expected me to know how to do it. It was now or never. Leap, or stay in that narrow room until the end of time. Or something. I stepped out and flew. Who knew? It was "ahhhhhh" while it lasted and so sad when it stopped. Even hovering three feet off the ground is a step up from mere standing.

I return often to flying. In my dreams. In my work. In my dreamy kid-soup state, I spent hours (days, maybe a year or two) trying to teach a bear how to fly so I could take a ride. I guess I still do that. I stand in the studio and imagine my hips buoyantly bubbling up sky-height. The imagery seeps in and I am low-flying again, always low-flying. As I sleep, waking-ly, I barely hover above the power lines, the treetops. Or I jump in live stop-motion, like a bionically slow bouncing ball. Trampoline feet. Feats. I have it. I bounce down suburban streets at telephone wire height, then roof height, then small tree height, then tall dog height, then it is over. I am running, just running. It wears off like a trip, like the end.

I wrote about leaves 15 years ago and again last fall.

"Let it die," said Grace in passing. Grace is always passing, quickly, calling over her shoulder as she walks. Our conversations never begin or end, she just picks up in the middle, as always,
as if nothing had happened in between. Maybe nothing has. She was talking about the hanging plant she had given me. It was left one day on my front porch with a cryptic note: "Not much light at night." She meant the hanging cactus, but maybe she meant everything? Anyway, as she passed by today, she said, "Let it die." She might have said it another way, Grace. "If it dies, who cares."
No. "If it dies, it dies." Yes. I thought, "That's cold. Sad." Graceless. But there was a ring to it--peaceful, wise, one who had seen much death. That plant will die. That plant will come back.
That plant will be, hanging. It becomes even as it dies.

I see the leaves some days, walking. Most of the time I see the blur, all the leaves at once brilliant and bright or cold and hunkered down against the wind. Roar. Last week, they fell, falling. There is a comfort.

I saw the leaf this morning. I was alive, awake, unsure. I saw it walking the dog. The dog saw it first, most likely. She was looking at the leaves. I wasn't. I got angry with her. It was cold and she wasn't going fast enough. Not today. It wasn't her. I can't, can't wait right now. My gut drops. I apologize out loud to the dog, to passing cats, to anyone in earshot. She trots on in spite of me. Left, right. Heel, toe. And this leaf. Okay. I saw the death all over it. Greenish, mostly, yellow and brown, devouring. A slow, slow crush. Alive and dead at the same time. (The box is cracked open a peek. Does it die because we look?). Right this minute both. So are we. All of it at once. We learn it all to undo, to start fresh. But we don't know that. To begin with. Leave you hanging.

What am I doing right now? Left foot crossed over right, head in hand sideways. Sighing.
I am here--dead or alive. And. Goddammit. Sly smile. Still in there somewhere. Light waning,
sky. A hint of blue in the white. A kind of blank grey. An absence. Dying trees all over my windows. Fragile yellow. "It's Okay" green. I'm going, look after me. Tips of branches alone against the elements. Stripped, nothing left to hide. It's all been said. Keep whatever you need for spring, but only what you need.

nothing much

When I have been away from movement for a long time, I come back. I lie on the floor and address my body with attempted kindness, curiosity and ever-present attention to breath. I return and try to allow myself to do so. I go away, I come back into view. And so it is with writing. All along, the brain spins. But I've been neglecting the catching, the shaping, the sharing. I come back. I sit at the table and address my words with attempted kindness, curiosity and ever-present attention to breath. I remember Natalie Goldberg and Writing Down the Bones. I heed her advice on cutting through resistance and judgement and fanfare. I write quickly, three drafts. Here is what happened this morning.

"nothing much"

An everyday day dawns
In the middle of a long stretch with little variation.
The morning progresses.
I put on glasses and grungy pants.
I take the dog for a walk.
Snow spritzes the ground, a nice touch.
The dog looks at me, I look at her.
At home, in the kitchen, I brush her.
She stretches out for a long belly scratch before breakfast.
I make coffee, a pair of smoothies.
Afterward, I fill the blender
With warm water, some lavender soap, and watch it spin on high.
On a cold day, today, I pull off the lid
And steam rises elegantly from the frothy, soapy milkshake.
I gaze out the window into winter.
A decorative plastic heron perches in the yard across the street, always.
He almost catches me off-guard.
He's in my line of sight so much, he's real.
I clean an everyday clean.
Hot water, rubber gloves.
Apple, pear and ginger peels get pushed down the drain.
The faucet runs down as I flick on the disposal.
It groans and grunts, metal against metal,
choking, whirring, threatening to end it all.
It doesn't.
Flick off and silence.
My husband works soundlessly in the other room.
The everyday breaks.
The distinct scent of raw ginger rises like a phoenix from the drain.
A fresh "hello."
A remembrance, an afterthought.
A parenthetical "hallelujah."
A pause, a split-second.
"Keep going."
A brief "yes" to what is.