Again and again, I practice being with myself. With the multitudes– the crunch and the sweet. This morning, there’s some crunchy, stringy, malnourished whining pulling me around, trying to convince me of some dark doom lurking just beyond and ahead.

I need to say out loud that I am flailing in my practices. I am in the liminal and I don’t know what day it is or what I need to be doing (dramatic). I am in a messy soup of my own making. It feels lonely but i know it is interconnected with the messy soup of living in modernity right now.

This. A thread woven into a collective story. A reminder that what my system is experiencing is not separate from the world. My inner world, a reflection of collective values, systems, and beliefs. One of them being the lie of separation.

It’s lodged in my system. It’s squeezing around my heart and lungs. It’s a remnant of a colonial logic that we all have inherited in varying degrees and angles.

As difficult truths and patterns arise, how do I turn attention towards myself in a way doesn’t feel like surveillance or judgement day?

It’s here I notice a pattern, a familiar way of being that tries to replicate itself over and over again. It’s uncomfortable anddd it reminds me of what I’m seeking, healing, creating. The pain is a flare, a signal to shift– my perspective, my thoughts, my body. She is asking me to choose something different right now. Choose to be in relationship. Not just an observer, a judge, a disembodied philosopher. Get in there, be with her. Don’t float above and cast orders from a sterile dimension.

Relationship is really the magnus opus of my life and I don’t want to shy away or dilute this desire any more. It’s become too exhausting and untruthful to do so. It’s at the root of my movement and art practices. It’s what my heart most yearns for even if she closes herself off sometimes. It’s scary to admit because a part of me does not want to fail in public (or, a part of me wants to avoid conflict and discomfort :) ). It’s scary to let go of fantasies and live in the reality of my relationship constellation as it is now.

I desire a secure relationship with myself. With this moment. I desire capacity to be with all who is here right now– my sister in the other room, our ancestors watching over us, my sore ass cheek, the basil plant in the corner, my longings and tears, the humm of mechanical equipment in the distance, you here reading my words.

I name these desires and soften my gaze.

The way into relationship is not through an interrogation room. It is another way of being that I am feeling my way into. That I do not totally have words for right now. It’s in my exhale, and my willingness to stay and be seen. It is a practice I re-commit to, here and now.

I get a whiff of something fragrant, something soft and real.

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I am Here. And I am tending to the subterranean of my soul.

A slower process unfolds. One that knifes down narrative and shirks away from the light. It’s dark and meandering. It’s quiet and un-spectacular.

It co-exists with the pulse of my life and world events, churning, swirling, and then stuck.

I sit here in the season of my solar return, floating. I am moving, but with a passivity that I can no longer tolerate. This is a part of the path… Observing the flinging from zero to sixty to zero. The ways I demand things to go a certain way. The other times I want to be led. The ways I hide behind story and idealism. The ways I want to be above it all. The ways I want to stay in bed.

There’s nothing wrong here when I have a thicker response to it all. Thick, viscous, loving.

I have been needing larger containers, something to hold the depths, something/someone to see these patterns that often go unseen by most. To reckon with my largeness and situate me in the family of things. To poke and prod and remind me that I am author of this life.

More and more, this arrives into my field, in the shape of lover, guide, friend. And now that it is here, a part of me wants to rebel against it. You don’t understand. Look away. I am baby. I am teenager. I am woman. Artist. Queer. Contemplative. See-er and seeker.

I am vast, not-fully-know-able. I am a node. I have been hiding.

I am sorry. Relax. Show up. Let go. I love you. What?

Stay. Just a moment longer.

Sometimes I feel like a buoy that refuses to sink. And, I need to sink. I want the ocean floor. My soul demands to explore these edges. I am here because I want to be, and the buzz in my chest reminds me of this. We won’t settle for the surface.

Metaphor helps me stay in my body, in the feeling, in the heart. May it be an avenue for passage, rather a distraction that feeds the gap. This gap between Me and me.

I am trying to build bridges with others, with movement, with voice, with ink and paper. May these bridges be alive, covered in moss, growing and decaying as they serve their purpose.

I am willing to look/feel myopic and out-of-this-world. May this dark, funky path lead me to Me and to You and You.

I am bored of the world of words and story and explanation. May vibration, mood, grief, electricity, moss, and song flood my system. May it spill out into words that evoke movement, that cast spells, that shift energy.

I am sad for the gaps in my writing— not because the internet needs more words, but as a barometer on my willingness to touch and be seen here. May my Truest rhythms be honored. May I return over and over again.

A pattern becomes clearer

When political and social spheres are hot, my inner life grasps for attention. 

Me me   me me me me 
I need     help
I’m the  [bad/good/innocent/evil] one
Don’t look at me
Save me
No, I’m a burden

Time, space, place collapse
It’s all on You/Me
This
Now
Fucking do it

Do what?

This isn’t about you
This is much bigger

Wow
Do you feel it?

It’s a weird bottom
Sticky, grimy, sharp

Or, am I still falling?

As above, so below
As within, so without

What might some love do here? 
Can you make a soft nest?
Just as you would to a struggling friend
A stranger even
Yeah I’d buy a stranger a coffee
I’d give you the benefit of the doubt

Chill, love
It’s so hot
Give yourself a bath

I want a world with bathhouses for everyone
I want more forehead kisses and hands on my back
Yes many hands
Yours and yours and yours

It's different when we’re together
Body to body

Why do i feel so far a part from You?
From Us

I want harmony
I want dissonance 
I love the minor key
I’m not afraid of the scrunch

Just a little 
But I want it
I want it all
For us

Compression is a fucking godsend
Crush me
Help me feel small
Or, right-sized
Smash me into the dirt
Help me remember the belonging i know

I’m not interested in being clean
Hell is an untouched body

Bring me into the thick of it
The complexity
The organic truth

Life is an ongoing moment
Rejoice in the pressure of a full lung
An emptied one too
That’s where (y)our power is

 big love, from my cave to yours

some resources keeping me bobbing, riding, flowing  <3


Staying coherent in a time pulls us apart by Sadee Whip

Dark Woke with Janaya Future Khan

Shaking to Flip ya Lid by Nightmares on Wax

Admiring the silhouette of naked trees and wondering what they have to say...

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I am now moving through the shadows.

No longer locked in. No longer mistaking the dark for all that is.

Something is different now.

There was a time of being consumed. Of hiding. Embarrassment and isolation. Confusion.

That chapter has been cracked open. By falls and mistakes. By loving glances and moments of staying (just a bit longer).

The shadows do not disappear. They do not even get smaller. In fact, they seem way bigger.

But my body is warm, and I am not alone.

There’s a spark in belly and finger tips.

The radiator of my soul is emanating a heat I cannot ignore.

Open the windows, bite into the lemon, let the cold flush your cheeks.

This is what is now. This is a part of my dance of becoming.

This! is a slice of heaven!

To see shadows and light cast across an empty room and to move towards them!

To invite my body into delicious movement.

To let my soul be.

To be entangled and moved.

To do what I want.

Which, right now, is to dance in this empty room surrounding dust and sound and a sense of Yes.

Thank you for witnessing, for being here.

May the world call out to you and draw you into little slices of heaven.

with care,

em(ily)

A few days ago, a full hour into a zoom call, I realized that the sound was coming through my computer speakers and not my big noise-cancelling headphones covering my ears. Am I even listening?

Where the heck am I?

Times are confusing and full. There’s a lot of noise. Certainly externally, also internally - ideas, projects, relationships, desires, worries, hungers, and logistics. It’s a lot. I think we’re all feeling it in our own ways.

I notice the feeling of disorientation and judgement that comes with these little realizations of being off.

Damn, wow, how could I not notice… what was I thinking… how could I ever… what’s wrong with me…

There is something terrifying about confidently going forth in a direction that proves to be “wrong.” A part of me cringes with embarrassment at the thought. Like everyone is staring… Does she know her shirt is on backwards? Does she realize there’s a huge piece of lettuce on her teeth? Does she even understand that big word she keeps throwing around like water?

How to orient when shit gets confusing? When you realize that your shirt is on backwards and you think it’s Thursday but it’s definitely Monday?

Huh. Do I know where I am right now? Where is my body in this moment? Where is my mind? Can I ground into this present, into what is in front of me?

I could grip, I could struggle, I could try to Fix.

And/orrrrr…

I could also go along for the ride. I could laugh at myself. I could be amazed at the vastness of my attention and humbled by just how much I don’t know. How much is happening beyond my conscious perception. My pre-frontal cortex can only handle so much.

I can course correct as I notice something is off.

Shift, adjust, take the next best step.

Feel my feet on the ground, my tush in this chair, breath, shift.

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It’s a moment, by moment practice.

And instead of trying to make myself invincible to such disorientations, I’m curious about riding these waves. As a dancer, I’ve found a certain amount of pleasure by giving into the disorientation of closing my eyes, moving about space, falling, ending up somewhere I wasn’t “planning” to go.

What does this look like in my day-to-day? at my desk? in my working life?

Like, maybe this disorientation brought me somewhere interesting, maybe it reveals something about myself that I get to learn about and integrate.

I am interested in building my capacity for disorientation. In part, because I don’t think world is going to get any less confusing.

This also feels like a deep practice of Trust. Trusting an order that’s beyond my recognition, beyond my conscious knowledge.

Hmmm maybe this is just right where I need to be, doing just what I need to be doing.

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Thanks for being here, for your time and attention with these words on a screen. I’m still writing here IN DEEP SHIFT as spirit moves me to, and I’ve also opened up a new space Shapeshifting Studio ▨ ◍ ⟁ ▦ ◁ It’s an emergent space, more oriented towards embodiment, sensuous living, and creative practice. Join us over there if you’re intrigued!

A fellow deep diver tosses me a line, not to save me (an impossible task for someone else to do) but to remind me that the void is a shared space. Our voids are connected. A deep network of underground psychic sewage pipes. It’s smelly but I’m not as alone as I was previously convinced. Now, I’m swimming. I’m swimming and now I’m writing. Now I’m here. 

Maybe it’s all the rigorous shaking and dancing from this past weekend. Maybe it’s the full moon x lunar eclipse. Maybe it’s an amorphous weekly schedule and the vulnerability of being an independent artist, teacher, and small business companion. Maybe it’s the depths of childhood wounds coming to the surface. Maybe it’s the change of season approaching. Maybe it’s the lack of health insurance. Maybe it’s knowing this pain is a fractal of the collective. Maybe it’s… interwoven capitalism, patriarchal, colonial, white supremacist, exploitative patterns tugging at the soma. Maybe it’s riffs in friendships and longings for deep partnership and intimacy. 

Maybe. 

Maybe, likely, it’s all of it. 

So. 

So what?

What to do with all of this?

Maybe. 

Maybe this is what it is right now. 

Maybe this is just a flavor of being alive right now. 

Maybe I am not being asked to fix or repent or change anything. 

Maybe the task is to feel it. 

Maybe the task is to accompany the sad clown self.

Maybe the task is to fill the void with my tears, my words, my love, my light, my tired body-heart-mind. 

Maybe the void wants company, too. 

Maybe it’s okay to not know. 

Maybe the resistance to feel it is causing more pain.

Maybe I don’t have to pathologize or fix or understand. 

Maybe the sad clown and the void is a dance, a performance that wants to be witnessed. 

Maybe, actually I have time and space to be here with this pain. 

Actually, I do have the capacity to be oh so tender.  oh so sweet with this silly, sad clown.

Actually this is a worthwhile use of my time and energy. 

Actually, I do have the patience to be with this pain, this ambiguity, this loneliness.

Actually, I do know what to do. I don’t know what it all means or why or how, but I have tools and support to be present.

Hmmm, I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know how long it’ll last. I don’t know. i don’t know.

Maybe stay, stay, be, breath. 

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Offering tenderness to quiet, dark, wet, tired, silly creatures within. 

with hugs,

em

Between dancing and shaking, I did a lot of laying on the ground this weekend. If you’re in need a good lay on the earth, here’s an 11 minute rest practice from me to you.

As much as I resist it, I continually ask for this place/space. The liminal, the threshold, the edge, the whisper.

I have more vibes than words these days, and I am letting that be enough. Eventually more words will come about being a recovering graduate student, feeling my way into being a Durham-Cleveland-based artist (NY/LA isn’t for me ;) ), cultivating a sustainable life as a movement artist and teacher (vvvv much in progress ;) )

ButtTtt in the meantime…

Something is being birthed. It’s demanding to be seen and heard, like right now. My job is to get out of the way.

SooOo, here’s an informal late-night invitation to a new space— .

A gentle beginning. Like a quiet, dark skinny dip in the neighborhood pond.

Maybe see you over there?

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I’ll be honest that I’ve been thinking of writing a lot these past couple months. Thinking and thinking, and then realizing I haven't written or shared. Sleep, work, self doubt, grad school recovery, worldly heaviness keeping me from being here. And also a shrinking feeling that I’m curious about… that my voice isn’t important right now. While I coach myself through the harshness of my innerworld, I also know there is some truth here. The voices of Palestinians and those putting their lives on the lines to stop the genocide, of people being violently attacked and deported by ICE, of Black and brown people exhausted by the same shit killing their communities, – these are voices that need to be heard, respected, and followed. The global majority is crying out, screaming, dancing, and demanding for the dismantling of violent, supremacist systems and for the space, resources and support to create a world that can hold many worlds.1 

I hope you’re finding a way to stay abreast of movements for justice, liberation, and well-being of all in your own communities. It is the work of all of us, and nothing is too small. Care and rest is a part of it, too.

It’s in this energy that I share about a project I’m really proud of and is much, much bigger than me in many ways. Thank you full moon in capricorn this week for extending a generous hand back into this space of deep shift. This is a meandering reflection on my past couple months, offered with hope that something here sparks connection, inspiration, and breath.

In my shapeshifter fashion, I found myself in Beaufort, North Carolina the past two months building a giant parade puppet. I said yes to an internship opportunity just after graduating from my MFA and got to be a part of a team engaging puppetry with climate resilience initiatives. A dream come true that I didn’t even know I had. 

I want to share a bit of our process with you because 1. I’m really proud of our puppet, like just wait until you see it!! and 2. there are scientists, educators, and communities doing incredible work to nurture resilient communities in the face of climate crises, and I want you to know about it. Just knowing that this work exists, let alone being a part of it, grounds me and offers tangible hope amidst the grave reality of the current administration in the U.S. and the toll it is taking on the well-being of our environment, our bodies, and our community. 

I’m gonna hone in on the 20-foot parade puppet we made of a Right Whale named Granite. Note: this project is a piece of a wider ecosystem of education, community engagement,2 and research and this reflection is my own perspective and associations from being a part of it. 

Parades and Puppets as a way

Wait- you might be asking- what does building a big puppet and walking in a parade have to do with climate resilience or education? 

It’s a good question. And a couple years ago, I would’ve been like: yeah that’s cute but not really useful. It’s not really doing anything. Seems symbolic and fun, but not practical. 

And to that self, I say: I hear you. And, I also want to propose that creatively engaging with our ecosystem matters. That playful, exuberant expression of our love of ocean kin matters. That parades are an expression of what’s important to a community, and what might happen if ocean creatures take over 4th of July parades all over this country? 

It’s impossible to know the full impact of a piece of art and performance once it is offered to the world. In the case of our 20 foot whale puppet– maybe it will spark someone’s love affair with Right Whales; maybe it will move someone else to get involved in whale conservation efforts; maybe it will inspire a child to tell their dad to slow down while speeding in their boat or stop their cousin from throwing trash out in the sea; maybe someone will start a community project to build a giant puppet for a creature that’s endangered in their own ecosystem. I don’t know but I like to ponder the possibilities, the beautiful mycelial network of impact and connection that can nurture curiosity, connection, and care for land, sea, and each other. 

Our Process

During our process, my team– made up of undergrad college students and theater professor and puppetry artist, Torry Bend – worked alongside scientists and conservation professionals who collectively have decades of experience researching and advocating for the protection of dolphins, whales, and the well-being of the ocean at large. A dreamy collaboration that affirmed the expertise and experience that all of us brought to the table. 

Though initially, I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what I was bringing to the group – I never built a giant puppet before and I haven’t taken biology since freshman year of high school. I found myself in a role I am familiar and skilled in ~ the glue that keeps the boat afloat. I brought the project coordination, group facilitation and embodiment skills that helps myself and others be flexible, steady, and moving towards our goal. 

I brushed off my sewing skills and leveled up my power tool know-how. Keeping my hands busy in a workshop was a blessing after writing a masters thesis these past six months. Sewing the inside of the belly of the whale, stitching her foam skin to the structural rings that made her shape, sawing bamboo sticks  – getting lost in these menial tasks scratched a special itch in my body-brain. more please, I whisper to the universe. 

Everyone on our team was leaning into some kind of edge: learning about marine life, puppetry, and power tools. It was challenging and frustrating at times. We had resources but not an unlimited budget. For some folks it was their first time working in a workshop setting which was understandably uncomfortable at times. It’s hard to see the school for the fish, as they say. When you’re locked in on something really specific like the curve of a Right Whale’s lower jaw or the backpack for the middle belly puppeteer, it’s hard to see how its all going to come together. It was a dance of zoning in and stepping back to see our progress, day to day, week by week.

Meet Granite

Not only did we build a specific species of whale – a North Atlantic Right Whale– we designed our puppet to represent a specific, special whale who’s name is Granite.3 Granite is 27 year old Right Whale, a mother, who’s been sighted off the shores of North Carolina during their migration between florida and Canada in recent years. As far as scientists know, she is still alive and well today. 

We learned about Granite from Keith, founder of Bonehenge who has an infectious passion for marine life, a commitment to preserving whale skeletons for education, and a special knack for telling stories. Keith consulted with us on the design of our parade puppet. We learn that Right Whales have these formations on their skin called callosities, rough callous patches that are inhabited by whale lice and barnacles. A whale is identified by their specific constellation of collosities which we included on our puppet of Granite. Full grown Right Whales are anywhere from 40-60 feet long. So at 20-feet in length, our puppet was the size of a baby Right Whale! They are baleen whales with a broom-like filtration system that allows them to eat tons of krill a day.

As a fierce advocate for ocean kin, Keith also shares some difficult stories about different species of whales who have been found ashore. He says that we/scientists don’t know exactly how old these whales can live because all the whale deaths that have been recorded have been due to human impact – boat strikes, entanglements, and plastic pollution. They are gravely endangered – only 370 left. 

Bringing Granite to Land

There is something fantastical and challenging about bringing a massive, gorgeous marine mammal to land. How do we build something so large that humans can still maneuver? How can we convey the grace of this creature gliding through the ocean with ease? 

It’s an impossible task in many ways–usually a whale on land means that they’ve died. And yet we went for it, bringing a vibrant version of Granite to land. Puppetry offered a beautiful form to manifest a representation of her that felt realistic and also asked us to suspend disbelief of a whale walking on land. It took a village to birth her and another village to guide her through the parade.

As a dancer/ improviser/student of body intelligence, I am in awe with the ways puppetry asks us to move and communicate with one another and the puppet themselves. Puppetry invites us to embody something or someone else– in this case, a creature much bigger than any one human. Three humans took on Granite’s form– one at her jaw, one in her belly, and another at her tail. Embodying a giant puppet demands communication, verbal and nonverbal, to move as one. It’s messy, sweaty and certainly much more clunky than how Right Whales actually move, and I think there’s something humbling about that.

As Granite walks/swims down Front Street, hundreds of children and adults OOoOooo, awwww, squeal, and clap. This majestic, intelligent, and graceful creature draws especially loud cheers in between scout troupes and military vehicles.

I wonder about the impact of being in the presence of an ocean creature that no one, except very specific researchers, would otherwise be able to see in person. How might being in the presence of Granite cultivate awe and respect in a way that facts and information cannot? Could our enthusiasm for land, sea, and kin grow louder than the allegiance to nation state?

Maybe a big leap, but I’ll toss it out into the ocean of possibilities.

I offer a bow to Granite and the villages who brought her life on land. May she grace us with many more walks to come. #LongLiveGranite

My time at the Atlantic has come to a close for now. I have big gratitude for the experience on many different planes. I’m certain more water, ocean, whale reflections will likely spill out over time.

with big love and breath,

em

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I have been out of my monthly rhythm of writing here in deep shift. But, boy have I been writing. For those who have been following along, you may know I’ve been in a graduate program the past year and a half, working on an interdisciplinary dance MFA. In a few weeks, I’ll be graduating, so I’ve been crossing through some big milestones— one of them being my thesis project Thresholding.

It’s been a dense chapter—winding, weird, disorienting, expansive—in ways I may elaborate on in the future as I have more time to absorb and reflect. Times are uncertain (stressful, bizarre, violent)— I feel the economic precarity of the moment as I soon get kicked from the cozy (expensive) nest of higher-ed and launch myself into the job market. Amidst familiar feelings of dread, I also feel a deep sense of clarity on my commitments. Dance, embodiment, improvisation, collective song and ritual practices being a few of them. While I could wax on some big critiques of institutional education, overall I am fired up about committing to art and ritual in this hellish late capitalist landscape.

I want to offer a glimpse into the early seeds of Thresholding and pull back the curtain on what creative research can look/sound/feel like. Below is an edited excerpt from the beginning of my thesis writing. It offers some background on my experience with Threshold Singing, a contemporary non-religious practice of singing to folks on the threshold of life and death, and how/why I integrated it into my creative movement practice.

I’ll be sharing more photos from our process and performance, and I am crafting a listening experience of Thresholding which I am excited to share with you into in the coming weeks. For now, an introduction, I have to start somewhere. It’s a deep dive… and I want to invite you into this river I’ve been swimming in.

At a threshold

In a small, two-occupancy room at a local nursing home, I am rocking back and forth, weight shifting between my feet, right and left, right and left, keeping me in the room, attuned to my own body sensation and present with the elder I and a fellow Threshold Singer are accompanying. Gospel music plays on a radio in the corner. We try to sing over it until a nurse comes by to turn it down. Preacher’s wife, the nurse mentions. We lean in closer, each of us on either side of her bed, surrounding her with song. Sensing agitation and stress, we change songs. In breath, out breath, in breath, out breath, we sing. Slow, slower... we match her labored breathing. She is unable to speak, but her body tells us that she can hear us. She listens as we listen to her body. Her breath changes, tears gather at the corner of her eyes, her feet and hands shift and reach. We move in a bit closer, singing steadily, softly. We are with you, your life and death matter, I think to myself, about this woman I’ve just met. Just as we bring our singing to a close, her son arrives to be with her.

A threshold is often described as an in-between or liminal space, a crossing from one place to the next. Entering a threshold will take us somewhere, but the destination may not be entirely known. In terms of space, a threshold can be thought of as a simple boundary, like the threshold of a doorway. In scientific terms, a threshold may refer to a boiling point, or another measurement such as pressure or volume that marks a significant change of state.

change

            movement

                          pressure

                                     mystery

Death may be the ultimate or most mysterious of thresholds, with varying beliefs about where death takes us—back to the soil we come from, onwards to heaven or hell, through a bardo, into the spirit world, or onto another life here on Earth. It’s this mystery that has led to many rituals and myths, across culture and time, that have helped people prepare for death, honor those who have crossed over, and ultimately create meaning through the anxious anticipation of death and the profound pain it creates for people left in its wake.

In the encounter described above, a fellow singer and I are offering a form of palliative care called Threshold Singing, a contemporary non-religious practice of singing to people who are sick and dying.1 Our song and embodied presence contribute to a thick network of care at the bedside of a women who would die a week later—music plays in the background, a nurse remains nearby to respond to her needs, a family member arrives to be with her. It’s in this thick space of song and care, this practice of getting so “close to the bone” of death and grief, where my inquiry as a movement artist and researcher begins.2

My project started from a curiosity about Threshold Singing as a type of palliative care and what it offers to people on the threshold of life and death through song, proximity, haptic movement, and embodied listening. What emerged as another point of focus is what this embodied practice has given to me as a person who is not actively dying but navigating the twists, turns, and losses of living. At the time I was introduced to Threshold Singing, I had recently lost three people close to me, so I started to consider how this practice might be supportive to broader experiences of grief.

Alongside an intergenerational ensemble of singers and movement artists, I started to explore the embodiment of Threshold Singing through a creative movement process. Working with repetitive singing, contact improvisation, and embodied listening, our movement research led the development of Thresholding, a socially engaged performance practice rooted in care ethics. One of my convictions with Thresholding is that being with our grief together in an embodied way—through song, proximity, and touch—is an act of care and a practice of mutuality.3 Thresholding is a practice of refusal to dominant cultures in the U.S. and beyond that want to smooth over the reality of death and grief that have marked the first quarter of the 21^st century such as the COVID-19 pandemic and compounding climate crises that impact more people and landscapes each year.

When I started my graduate program, I didn’t know I was going to work with Threshold Singing or so closely with grief. I had some gut feelings, I was drawn towards working with compost and decay, I had glimpses of an intergenerational ensemble. But I was in the dark for a bit and quite scared and unsure for awhile. Thresholding emerged from little sparks and tears, and quite significantly from a collective of people who rooted me on, asked questions, shared their knowledge and hearts, and joined me in my inquiry. While I’ve been swimming so deeply in this work, myself two years ago had no idea I’d be here, no idea what Thresholding is. I am in awe of this. I am in awe of creative process, of making something, of forming bodies, voices, and energy into a constellation that didn’t yet exist. I looking forward to sharing more with you.

thanks for reading and being here.

For those in Durham NC or Cleveland OH, below are a couple opportunity to move together in person!

Cleveland Group Shake - APRIL 6th 3PM at Maelstrom Collaborative Arts

COMMUNITY WORKSHOP Engaging touch as a more of creative care

Wednesday April 23rd 5:15pm at the Duke School of Medicine More details here

We communicate so much through physical touch. From the smallest gestures with strangers to a lingering embrace with a loved one, touch can be a way of connecting with, communicating to, and caring for others. This workshop will be a playful exploration of touch as a creative mode of care. You will be invited to partake in simple embodiment practices that will support listening with the whole body. Together, we will practice navigating consent verbally and nonverbally through partner and group exercises. Open to all. No prior experience necessary.

I am really looking forward to sharing this workshop in collaboration with Duke Arts!

shift. pause. shift.

now, here. one foot makes contact with the cool floor. The other leg is crossed. Both butt cheeks find the chair. In between writing, chin rests on left palm. The forearm serves as a kickstand for heavy head. I can smell my crotch, lingering with the scent of its shedding. Candles flicker in the corner of my vision. My neighbor is hammering something into the wall. Across the street, neighbors unload their minivan full of groceries.

I am settling in.

now, I am driving up Interstate 77, weaving between cars and trucks on the two lane highway. It’s dark and I am being hurled forward 70+mph by a metal box on wheels. My pants are stiff, cutting into my right hip crease. A friend and I talk on speaker phone - about our upcoming performance projects, about taking risks and changing our lives, about being queer in these times, about comfort and discomfort and the necessity of both. Their voice wafts from the speaker phone as I weave into the left lane. My head is jutted forward - simultaneously focusing eyes on the road and getting nearer to the speaker. I’m on hour seven of a trip back to Ohio.

I am still, I am moving. I am on my way. I am already there.

now, I am standing on two feet, eyes closed. Body is tall and loose. Knees soft. Weight shifts from right to left and back again. From heels to balls of feet and then somewhere in between. A voice cues me to extend the spine, to shift gaze up and beyond. I do, gently, slow. Back of the head drops ever so slightly down as chin lifts up. I am falling, I am falling, I am falling. Yet I remain on two feet. A lightness extends across the body, heel to crown.

I am falling. I am on two feet.

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It’s good to be here, in deep shift.

In another space-time continuum I am on the cusp of my last semester of this graduate program. I am headed towards my thesis performance, taking place in just a couple weeks. This has been a dense chapter, thicker than I can keep up with at times. So, I am shaping it into a portal that I can digest and draw from for years to come.

I have been swimming through disorientating waters during much of the program, intimidated by the amount of knowledge available at my fingertips (interlibrary loan and instagram scroll included), burdened by how much suffering is in the world (while trying to hold my own woes gently amidst them), and spooked by an eerie sense of being stuck in cycles (elections, personal, collective).

Finding ways to orient - physically, mentally, digitally, emotionally, spiritually - continues to be an important practice for me right now (maybe you two?).

I am grateful to have a body, to be cultivating a sense of home in my body. I am grateful for this fleshy, material form that grounds me amidst a shifting, dynamic, unstable world. The material realm helps to orient me through information overload and the shadowy detours of my psyche.

In dance and other movement space, folks will often talk about kinesthetic awareness — how we perceive the position and movement of our bodies in space. It sounds quite simple, but I find it is something that takes regular practice. Tuning into kinesthetic awareness not only helps land me back into my body and the present moment, but it also has been making life much more interesting, textured, and sensuous.

I invite you to tune into kinesthesia:

Is any part of your body touching the ground right now? where is your right ear? your elbows? your left butt cheek? what is moving? jaw, feet, eye balls, fingers?

I leave you right here– right where you are, somewhere else altogether, or in two places at once. Regardless, I wish you moments of grounding in the present moment and the capacity to find some kind of delight in wherever you find yourself.

peace,

em

Do not conflate my tears with giving up.

Do not confuse my confusion with submission.

These are seeds of power just starting to recognize themselves as such. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are those who mourn
Blessed are the meek

There is another world(s). One that asks of you exactly what you can give in this moment. Wet, soggy, tired. Exactly, precisely, specifically. This, this right here, is all you need to be. 

I pray that you find the strength to celebrate exactly where you are and exactly how you feel. I pray you let yourself be. I pray you stick with yourself. There is no rush, no rush, no rush. no. rush. 

Watch me nourish this life with this soft, porous, loamy dirt of my mind. Watch me pour the warm, salty water of this body into all I do. 

Your breakdown - micro and macro- this is a tilling of your geography - psychic, embodied, mystical. This is intimacy with the worms and bacterium of your gut. This is maintenance on your umbilical connection to life itself.  

It might not be pretty by someone’s standards. Some may be impatient with its rocking and its rhythm. Others might fear their own proximity to the vulnerability it takes to get here. 

But damn is it rich. Wow, is it fertile.  

This softness is a super power. This porosity is an opening to worlds.

Worlds beyond what you might see right now. 

Worlds that speak so sweetly, so gently. 

I want to meet you here. 

Will you come with me?

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300 or so pages to read, a couple thousand words to write, projects to organize, dances to dance. And I’m here, procrastinating a tad in a self-reflective moment and cheering on my future self. I can do it. You can do it too (whatever it is that you need to do!)

For how much I love movement, I resist it, too. I want to know before I do or say. I want to do things right and well. I want to sound smart and have a good plan. I want to feel safe. I am afraid of losing myself. I am afraid I have nothing to offer. 

This resistance to movement (shrinking, hiding, stalling) is uncomfortable. And yet, it can be so hard to move from it. There’s an impulse to stay, to cling, and figure out exactly what it is and what you need before moving forward. I wonder how this translates on personal and collective movements.

you are always in movement, dear. 

I notice how my thinking has changed (is changing). It’s interesting - when I’m feeling well, I am not over analyzing myself as much. It’s when I’m less well that the self surveillance kicks into high gear. In a few recent conversations, I noticed afterwards- oh nice, I was pretty present with that person. cool, that feels good. I wasn't obsessing about how I was being perceived or how much of an imposter I feel like, or whatever other anxious habits I can hole up into.

The moving mind hones in, zooms out, is present with what’s in front of it, and associates with memories, feelings, ideas, possibilities. The moving mind notices when they are stuck and feels agency to shift. Something about neuroplasticity, something about staying flexible, something about staying light.

Like a hula hooper, feet on the ground, hips sensuously circling, knees and ankles soft, I gotta keep the mind engaged, moving with curiosity, circling around questions, ideas, purpose. My moving mind can rotate around a grounded, connected center. Stillness within, movement beyond. Maybe a thought spiral isn’t all bad. Maybe this is how meditation works.

I can cry and feel very confused about myself one moment, and just a bit later feel an eternal moment of peace and connection with myself and a new lover - this is a moving mind (body, heart). This is my practice, to let myself be and then move onto the next moment. Oh, but I am a linger-er!  I want to stay in the moment. Of course the sweet moment of eternal peace and tender love - let me stay please!! But so too in the sad, self pity moments, oh man I’m just a confused cry baby and will always be forever!  

The river does not stay still, let yourself be moved. You don’t need to force it.

My heart is moving, pumping, pulsing. Moving on from some relationships and into others. This is hard. But I’m moving slowly, with more trust. I am also moving deeper into hearts I have been around for some time. To keep the heart moving is not avoidance or disposal, rather it's letting the heart move into and around the beloveds in front of me. I keep meeting myself and getting to know another layer of me/you/us. A heart in movement is alive, free. It helps to be around other moving hearts - this is how I am learning to dance with love rather than grasp or reject it all together.

I feel a bit sloppy, I’m mixing metaphors. Trains, hula hoops, rivers. Grad school is definitely a train. But the train is in an ecosystem. Even if I jump off the train, I’m still in the river. It’s all movement. I think I am hooping on a train that’s following the bank of the river.

[not a train, but a graffitied abandoned mill in northern Vancouver Island1 . This is a clip from a longer improvisation this summer, in conversation with with energies present and past]

I am going into some kind of portal. The way is movement. Calling upon the loving discipline that I know is within me. Reminding myself that this work - inner, outer, mine, and ours - is connected in ways beyond my current knowing. 

with breath,

em

p.s. here’s a late-summer reminder to lay your body down, too.

Soft enough to fall into, spacious enough to hold my multitudes. 

Here, in this tender space, there’s mossy, pine-needle covered earth. Welcoming stumbles and falls. Offering the body-mind a place to rest.

Tears and laughter are welcome here. So, too, are the dark thoughts, the depths of insecurity, judgment, and doubt, and the unbelievably bright ones, the wildly optimistic desires for what could be. 

Wide, softness embraces it all. Squishy, absorbent, malleable. Tender space is not indestructible, but it is responsive and anti-fragile.

There are no rigid white walls and right angles. No poured cement and its illusion of clean, even ground. No rooms to be separated into or out of. 

There are rocks and roots here, inviting me to pay attention, to be oh so present as I navigate this textured landscape. 

It’s inevitable that I’ll trip over my words and actions. Say something imperfect, get too close or cross a boundary. This does not banish me from the woods. It asks me to wake up, to check on myself and the roots I just kicked. 

Be here. Stay for a bit before running away and hiding from yourself, from your responsibility to life. 

There is space here for all of me. For the repetitive, embarrassing meanderings of the judging mind. The sticky patterns that keep showing up - am I lost? do I belong here? do they like me? why do I care so much? why don’t I care more? do-I-but-wha-if…..

Thank goodness, there’s a pool of cool water to jump into. Deep enough to keep cool, to be a source of renewal. Wide enough to hold the bubbling, frothing agitation of the subconscious making itself known. 

I’ll tread water for a bit. Thoughts moving and seeping into the cool depths. Nothing is exiled, just spatialized to make way for more of myself to show up.

As I settle in, possibilities for play emerge. I splash in the water, make a mustache from a soggy leaf, wade through the creek, find the perfect bough to sit on, follow a path new-to-me. Again, I may slip, I may fall, I may get lost. 

Tender spaces are full of risk. It’s not always easy to be here. This is not a sanitized space. 

I will get dirty. I may get bruised. This space will leave its impressions on me - needles get tousled in my hair, soil under fingernails, dried leaves cling to my back, muscles ache from effort. 

I don’t come here to stay the same. She changes me. This is what makes it so alluring and terrifying. 

Sometimes the change is so subtle, barely perceptible. Other times dramatic, needing care to integrate. 

She keeps calling me back. 

Speaking in a chorus– trees, moss, roots, water–whispering: 

We see you. You belong, no matter what. You can make mistakes here. Stay. Take care of yourself. Take care of us. We want to see you grow in strength and connection. We believe in your capacity to handle this. We’re in it for the long run. 

In other words, tender space is full of radical acceptance, patience, curiosity, love, and honesty. 

It’s brave to be tender with yourself, with each other. 

I get glimpses of this changing me and the communities I show up in. 

I’m more and more convinced that this is crucial to tending personal and community resilience. It feels like the rich soil from which bold action, accountability, and transformation can actually take place sustainably and with momentum.  

I am in practice, a student of the spaces and people who have held me tenderly. 

What do your tender spaces look/hear/feel/taste like? I’d love to know and tend to these spaces together. 

with warmth,

em

I write with the intention of leaving breadcrumbs, for myself, for you, towards new old worlds pulsing, trying, becoming.

It’s this feeling, this pulsing that I’ve been chasing, I think. Lately, I’ve described my relationship and journey with contact improvisation as “following a feeling.” Before I really knew what it was, or why I was drawn to it, I just kept trying to find people, jams, spaces where I could tap into a feeling. A feeling of what?… of connection, play, intimacy, challenge, aliveness, sweat. Of something that felt different from other dance spaces and from regular degular social life.

I want more of that. More of this. Yes that, right there, right here. 

My rational, worried self was resistant. Still is at times.

What is this? Where is this taking you? How will you take care of yourself? What will happen? What are you doing? Why this?

Many questions. Some worth sinking into.

Yes, yes. Let the questions bubble up, but don’t let them stop you in your tracks. Questions can guide your next move, don’t let them paralyze you with fear. 

It’s this leaning into a feeling that has led me into other spaces and places. Craving connection, depth, spiritual and creative growth, friendship and intimacy, I am learning to let these feelings guide me. The practical questions continue, but with more of a curious whisper rather than halting authority. 

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This past weekend I had the great joy and privilege of experiencing a Deep Play Retreat in the mossy woods of Washington state with a group of open humans, most of them new to me. This was a special, wild, challenging, and expansive container to be a part of. Part summer camp for adults, part group therapy, part improv theater. We created many worlds together; we dove into games and practices that invited us into intimacy with self and each other; we tried on different energies, roles, and characters.

Play can mean many different things to different people, and we acknowledged this as we approached edges and cliffs within ourselves and between each other. I experienced this weekend of ~deep play~ as a jungle gym of expression, an obstacle course for the psyche, a sandbox for the heart. I got to befriend my inner loner and face the part of me that’s quite avoidant. I got to witness my judgmental ass, seeing the one who thinks they’re better than you and simultaneously embarrassed by this. I got to jostle around the part that just wants to be good, or sometimes just wants to be seen as good and doing the “right” things. 

I felt the risks of play: of admitting I want to win or do well, letting aggression and desire foment, getting upset and losing something, fantasizing possibility. In this playground, with these people, we navigated through the muck of judgement and the cobwebs of avoidance. Here, at these edges, was a dark, rich soil, ripe for discovery and transmutation. Nothing to throw out or runaway from scared, embarrassed, or needing to be fixed. 

How do we play at and with our edges, the parts of ourselves that we might be most afraid of? How can we admit we’re scared or hurt and stay in the game? Can we give permission to ourselves and others to leave and opt out without shame?

This weekend affirmed the simple magic of gathering humans together, committing to compassionate presence, and invoking the gods of play. It connected me to the pulse I’ve been chasing, returned me to myself, and kept me in awe of the mystery.

This pulse I’ve been chasing is in part relationship: to self, spirit, you, the other. Relationship to earth, to sensuous life. It’s the pulse of change, of life’s instability, of the growing potential within my/our hearts. Oh how energizing it is to be in the buzzy, fertile place of connection, growth, and change. 

I emerge on the other side of this container, feeling a bit wider, multiplicitous, expansive. Connected, soft and clear, fierce and a little scared(scary). Imperfect and on fire to keep going. 

Bubbling, pulsing on the west coast,

em

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I’ll be hosting a workshop and jam in Cleveland in a couple weeks! I’d love to dance with you if you’re in town. Thursday July 25th 5:30-8PM at the Cleveland Foundation Studio.

Register here!

The dance is a smorgasbord of risks - of falling, of being rejected, of getting a foot in the face. The key is to activate the sensitivities of the body and take responsibility for the risks. All senses are on, available. The body is responsive, adaptable, moving.

Yes, you will fall. Yes, they will let you down. 

Remember, the ground is your most consistent partner. Forever beneath our bodies, earth is a big body, a lifelong dance partner. When I remember this, something changes. It doesn’t promise I won’t get hurt or let down. It does invite me to dance with gravity, with earth, with life. Risks, bruises, and pain included.

I get a lot of practice falling with my body, and, too, I feel myself spilling with words and emotions. I am forever falling forward into ideas, bodies, beds, jobs, situations.

What does it feel like to spill forward into life? 

Ecstatic, unencumbered, a sloppy, bright smiling mess. A clear laser, shooting forward, confident but not all-knowing. An unrestrained smile, tears pouring out, eyes twinkling, word vomiting all the things that excite me in this moment, spilling out the details of my life as if they are a sermon in and of itself. 

Am I anxious or just excited? Am I scared or just feeling vulnerable? Is there more to spill, to move forward? Is it beginning to settle and soak in? 

Chuckle, laugh, spill, draw outside of the lines, risk looking like a fool, risk saying the wrong thing. Ready yourself to adapt, be humbled, soften, apologize as needed. Take the risk and check in, is this okay? Sensitize yourself to verbal and non-verbal cues. 

This is how we play. 

Holding myself back, hiding from my life, avoiding risk (falling, confrontation, change, challenge) is it’s own kind of pain. Sure, sometimes it protects me from bruises and broken hearts, but most of the time it leaves me rigid, feeling stuck and disconnected from this sensuous life. 

Oh, gods of feeling, I offer this spilling body at your altar.

I am saying Yes to my life, I tell a friend earlier this year.

I am patient with my process, says a dusty affirmation card from a collaborative performance five years ago.

I am sorry it took so long, says a red slip of paper that was handed to me just a couple months ago.

spilling,

em

Parking the car on some gravelly pad, I get out and head to the woods. Attuning to the transition, the tree canopy thickens, I’m enveloped in speckled shade. There are more birds here, or I’m just listening a bit more closely. 

I’m alone, by most human standards. I drove myself here, sans friend or lover. Most likely I’m here out of some combination of longing, boredom, agitation, or sadness. No agenda, but I have a feeling I’ll dance somewhere. 

Water trickles nearby and a timeless energy fills my body-mind. Memories from a childhood spent on the watershed of Lake Erie, wading through the creek following dog and dad. 

Wind picks up and I feel the rustling of leg and arm hair. She brings awareness to my verticality, the effort of uprightness, while inviting full rounded curves, giving in just as the grass nearby.

A blue heron churns through the sky, seeking an edge to land on. My gaze follows their path, lifting my chin, spiraling my spine, making my head feel heavy.

There’s a fallen tree that’s asking for a dance. I oblige, letting my hands graze textured bark. My body finds a nook to nestle in and we shift in and out of connection.

I think I’ve known for awhile that this dancing out in the woods alone is not a solo. This is a practice of duet-ing life, of connecting with an ensemble of beings, seen and unseen. 

This is not a rejection of the solitude that I so dearly cherish, but a shift in the experience of myself as a-being-in-relationship. 

I’m interested in the practice of intimacy, the action of being in relationship, with other humans and the unseen layers around me. I am paying attention to how I come alive in relationship - responding to the wind with my movement, riffing off an improv game with theater collaborators, listening to my lover tell about their day, sending a voice note to my sister. 

Too, I am interested in the walls, the edges that push me back into myself - separate, alone, quiet, and static. These edges are information, sometimes acts of protection. 

Lately, I’m nurturing the mind that I am dueting all the times. There is always something to listen and respond to. Seen, felt, or heard. Who is it? Who’s with me here, right now?

This entanglement doesn't always feel good - yes, it adds depth to my life and can comfort the lonely soul, and simultaneously it wraps me/us into shared responsibility with this world. Violence, destruction, trickery included. It’s the both/and of grief and joy, pain and pleasure. I feel this as I filed my taxes, looking into movements of war tax resistance as we witness genocide funded by the US, senseless killing of tens of thousands in Palestine.1 2

This dollar matters, this action is connected to wider movements, this phone call could save a life, this listening reveals worlds.

How do I/we soften rigid, rugged walls of separateness? What does this feel like - in psyche and body? How do my attitudes and actions change when I sense potential friends and comrades in my midst? To what and to whom do I already belong? How does this action impact others - near and afar? 

Honing these yearnings of interbeing into action, I am trying to do less things “alone.” Invite a friend to join for the event, offer to carpool, share a meal, sign up for the workshop with community. Still, I forget to reach out, I shy away from the risks of being inconvenienced or rejected, I give into stories of my separateness, specialness, or too-much-ness. Sometimes the energy bandwidth just isn’t there to be social. 

But remember, even in the aloneness, you/I aren’t alone. Something is there/here. 

I imagine how these small impulses, preferences, and discomforts ripple out into collective patterns - physical and psychic. How do I/we practice collectivity? Where are edges of trust and comfort, conflict and growth?

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I miss the rhythm of writing regularly. I feel the yearning for change, in habits and containers. The impulse to annihilate, to throw it all away has also entered the chat. The dance of change speaks up and asks for a little tenderness, curiosity, and patience. Show up to the page/screen and see where it goes. Embrace the oscillation of bold action and responsive listening. Make friends with dissatisfaction, unsettledness, agitation. Onwards and inwards and outwards and onwards. 

in queer divine dissatisfaction, 

em

The piano finds its way to the middle of the studio with my effort. Feet pressed into the floor, my pelvis leaning into its shiny smooth black surface. I’m a little out of breath between all the pushing and talking. I sit down to play Chopin’s Prelude in E minor. It strikes me as funny that I loved such a melancholy song as a teenager. I still love this song. I practiced for a couple weeks before playing it here, now. I had never touched the piano in the studio before this. Sits bones tethered to the bench, right foot presses and releases the pedal. The spine sways as the gaze floats between sheet music and piano keys. There’s a part in the music that’s hard for me, intense and climatic, and so so satisfying when my fingers land on the right keys. There’s release when I get to the other side. A pause. The fingers linger in the last three chords. It’s soft.  

I get up from the piano and turn on the stereo system. A few years ago I stumbled upon a bossa nova jazz version of Prelude in E minor. The rhythm immediately goes to my spine and hips. Following sequentially my head moves. Weighted, thick serpentine movement. There’s a rhythm here, still a sort of melancholy but it’s held in a groove that moves me in a delicious way. 

I start talking again. Have you ever held or looked at a baby and said, you’re so cute I could eat you!!  I learn that there’s something that goes on the brain when we feel strong positive feelings of attraction, cuteness, and goodness. Something that can bring up feelings of anger and hunger.1 I like to think of these emotions, these feelings that we often think of as very different from each other– one more positive and the other negative, as living really close to each other in the brain.2 Our brains are a concoction of chemicals and hormones that are continually trying to balance themselves. We feel one thing, the body reacts to keep us balanced, alive, moving forward. 

I continue moving in the diagonal trajectory that I started with the piano push. Twisting and rotating my body, my guts are rung out, in that way that feels so good, detoxifying. I think of my yoga teachers. Chopin’s prelude now is in my body in a new way as I hum the melody.  Spotify took over and starts DJ-ing over my voice. Not what I planned, but I let the unfinished, draftiness of this performance be what it is. Complete but never finished. Satisfied, for now, and still moving. Committed to iterating. 

Why attempt to capture this performance onto digital paper? How can I not flatten the movement, the body into description, into a two dimensional image or a singular audio wave?  How can writing about the ephemeral be a sort of seed, a sign, or a glimmer of another world? How does the performance live on outside of my own memory, or those who witnessed it live? When does writing feel like a performance in and of itself? 

You had to be there, but also here’s a thread I’ll toss you from the body in another space/time. 

I want to tell you that I learned something through my dance, through the body. I want to tell you that memory is creative and evolving. I want to tell you that non-linear thinking is a gift, a way. I want to tell you that I’m leaning in, and I’d like you to come with me. I want to tell you that I am a researcher. I want to tell you that struggle is so close to pleasure, and I want to be brave enough to remember this and wrestle with it my whole damn life. I want to tell you that I am braver when you are brave. I want to tell you that this matters. 

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Something about letting go of trying to make sense, allowed for some kind of coherence to emerge. Something about this dance made sense, felt right, constellated knowledge into my body brain.

It might not make sense to you, or it might be a sense that’s different from mine and that’s okay. That’s really cool actually. I am interested in sense-making that allows us to meet and find each other in our commonness and uniqueness. I want to see where these meandering, non-linear paths might take us.

with a push and yield,

em

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A few scenes from the psychic depths over the past couple months:  trying to find a toilet, heating up a pot of diarrhea to drink, my cat shitting outside, a sewage truck seeping, full of community shit. I haven’t had many reoccurring dreams that I remember, so I’ve been curious about the emergence of this theme.

In one of my classes this semester, we’ve embarked on an experiment in social dreaming, movement improvisation, and collective imagination. It’s invited me to think in symbols and let non-linear thought patterns spool from my mind. Take the pressure off from figuring something out. Give space and time for patterns and meaning to emerge. 

So I’m dreaming of shit… It’s got me thinking about creative power, tapping into the bowels, making a mess, releasing what is no longer needed, getting it ouuuutttt. When I feel plugged up (creatively), thoughts get stuck in loops, circling like there’s nowhere to go. Like a car spinning its wheels in mud.

It’s taken quite a few dreams about shit to remember that I named this newsletter IN DEEP SHIFT. I laugh out loud at my prophecy. Clearly, I’ve been asking for this all along. I love it when I remember. May the forgetting be generative, loose, and free. 

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• I notice a desire in myself to wrap things up in a bow and be coherent. This sometimes leads to a beautiful piece of writing or dance, but often ends up clogging creative flow, inflating the ego, or otherwise getting my panties in a bunch. Right now, I’m letting myself speak and write in bullet points (or as a friend and cohort member said recently, talking in drafts), and it feels really good. What are my creative plungers? What does pouring draino (or a less eco-violent alternative) feel like in my body?

• Asking for something, expressing a need is really vulnerable. Showing your sadness, depression, uncertainty, or anxiety is really vulnerable. This can all feel quite dangerous in a culture where any perceived deficiency is cast as a burden. Sometimes a smile is a mask or a shield, and that is okay to use it as such. Notice your embodied armor; you get to decide when and with whom to use it. Give thanks to those who soften or remove their armor in your presence. Cherish the spaces and people who receive you as you shed parts of your own armor. Take a deep breath and notice if you feel a bit lighter, softer or a little less pressure, less rigid. 

• Now is the time. It is painful to feel that your life is just beyond your reach, in another place or another time, or with different people. To feel that the self I want to be is just on the other side of the workshop, training, degree, or commitment to a new morning routine– this is a deep fracture that cuts me off from a sense of knowing and agency. Now is the time can feel like urgency when coming from a place of grasping, but it can also feel like a warm satisfied belly with two feet firmly in the ground, toes wiggling as you catch the wink of a friend or lover. Now is the time to do the thing, to be in love, to join the protest, to take a nap, to initiate the convo, to get the tattoo, to make a new friend, to say yes, to say no.  

• There are more layers, more depth, more oomph in the body, in this life, in the cafe, in the grocery store, in the woods. Stay just a moment longer. Linger with a question, notice something really small. Notice how you feel, what you hear, what you see that might not be visible. 

• A dear friend-lover told me recently that during her workday she rewatched an old video of me dancing in a parking lot with yellow pants from last May. Hearing her talk about it, it brought to mind mirror neurons which I’ve more recently learned about. Mirror neurons1 are a class of neurons that are activated when one observes someone else doing an action. I remember that day, that dance, and have myself watched it a dozen times. Today I may not have the time or energy or access to run around in a parking lot, but sitting here, I can not only bring it to mind but the body can remember and feel something. How might we share expressions of grief, joy, and catharsis with one another, regardless of whether or not we are doing/feeling the exact same thing?

Is a dance some kind of excrement? Something the body needs to release? Ephemeral, in the moment, never to be exactly repeated? Something to offer to the earth? When does it nourish, compost, soil, or poison?

I hope a field of grass or some warm concrete calls to you for a dance. 

May we move through the shit, let the shit move through the body, this body, the collective body. May it be loud and satisfying.

em

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1

mirror neurons from https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/mirror-neurons-quarter-century-new-light-new-cracks/

I share with you across space and time a bricolage of questions, words, and movement that needed to move through and out on this rainy day.  

How does the body navigate open space? Physically, psychically?

How does the body tell me to flock, flee, or stand firm right where I am?

How does the body know they are not alone?

Worming through stuckness. Contextualizing fears. Scanning through thought spirals that throw knives at the self, embarrassment of self-isolation, fatigue with cycles of forgetting, and heavy heartedness for the fragility of political home/community/vision. 

Numbness is most terrifying. Brain fog, dissociation, sleepy sleepy, apathy. I see you and love you and I am right next to you, eye level, patient with the fire kindling within.  

Body, avail me to the sensuous world 
in all its pain and beauty
may I fall and risk 
love, bruises, broken bones
liberation
failure
ecstasy

gods of feeling
i dance to you 

with breath and muscle,

em

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p.s. I never turned paid subscriptions back on since I paused them in July. Current rhythms do not lend themselves to writing consistently here. So, in effort to hold onto deep shift more lightly and free-ly, there is no more paywall. I’ll let ya know if that ever changes. Much much gratitude to all who have supported my writing, thinking, and dancing here! 

Unworried about dirt and water, we embrace the elements. Mud squishes beneath boots. The softened earth receives knees. Our bodies warm up, belly-radiating to finger tips, cheeks flush. I sense my shifting awareness of our surroundings and my body - the sound of the highway nearby, a hawk swooping down, proximity to Brian, wet hands, hair in my face, the sun shifting towards dusk. 

A few hikers nearby pause in the distance, watching our dance. How startling it can be to see bodies moving differently. A glitch in expected rhythms of behavior. Feeling myself being witnessed, I am so glad I am a dancing body. My body is moved by an unseen purpose, embodying freedom in this moment. 

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I’ve been dancing so much! And have found many juicy, satisfying, new, and familiar ways of moving. And sometimes I’m like wait why do I doing this?  Sometimes I feel stuck and stiff and in my head. Sometimes it shifts and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I feel like a phony2 for whom dancing does not work its magic on me. Sometimes I just want to be still and do very little. 

My movement practice, I am realizing, is so often a practice of awakening to the sacredness of this time, this land, this body. It’s a process of reanimating the world and becoming more fully alive. I become a super sensitive thought-body, as one of my professors says, becoming more porous and responsive to the energies I’m surrounded by. My resistance to moving or connecting with myself and others is heightened when the world feels loud or I feel inadequate to receive. 

The practice of returning to my dance is a return to relationship with myself and the world.  

During my first semester of graduate school, a persnickety cloud of depression and buzz of anxiety crept in, self doubt got loud and some parts of me felt really scared. It’s not surprising as I move and take a big leap into the often intimidating waters of academia and commit to myself and creative inquiry. It never feels on time, but enough of me knows that it’s another opportunity to accept myself, to be vulnerable, to be that much more tender to myself and you and us, to keep going anyways, to dig a bit deeper, to ask for help, and to marvel at the wild weather of being a human right now. I feel a bit more wide-ness, a little less fear, and a tad more patience with the cycles. I am so grateful for tender friends, family visits, for poets and cats, strangers at the cafe, outdoor dances, eye contact and smiles. They all keep me going daily. 

Spending a couple weeks back on the shores of Lake Erie, I feel parts of myself returning. Parts of me that floated into the ether even before I moved and started graduate school. Reunited with family, friends, and collaborators, I am immersed in shared language and parts of the constellation that make up Emily. I’m a verbal processor, talking about what I’m learning helps it sink in. Noticing what is sticking and what I’m still chewing on. I love sharing what I’m learning, and while I am pursuing a formal degree, I like to visualize and practice a spilling of the knowledge from my body-mind to yours and anyone I am in conversation with. This is how we share worlds. This is how realities are created and nurtured. 

“Notice the sacredness of where you are, the mysteriousness of where you are. Where you are is already sacred, There is no realm to access, no subterranean secret to be divulged, no ‘inside’ to gain.” - Bayo Akomolefe

Something we discussed in our class on ritual theory this past semester is modern society’s disenchantment with the world.  It’s the poison of abstraction that might look like depression on an individual level and collectively creates unjust economic systems and justifies genocide right in front of our eyes. It siphons the sacred into chapels and assigns it certain people, certain times, certain places.

Oh but it is our attention that makes anything sacred! Our attention shifts a space or activity from mundane to deeply interesting. Flat to textured. Profane to sacred.

I offer my dance above, at new favorite spot in my home here in North Carolina, as a drop in the ocean of enchantment. A prayer for sanctity and solidarity with life affirming movement. May the power of the subtle shifts reverberate widely.

Beaming out gratitude for your presence and attention. Wishing you gentle, warm, and sensory-rich beginnings.

peace,

emily

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A nudge to lean into the phony feelings: