no more solos
towards animist embodiment
hi there, deep diving friends. I decided to include some movement scores/meditations in this dispatch of deep shift. They are woven throughout the writing below. Feel free to try one on, play around, adapt it to your next walk in the woods or neighborhood park. I’d love to hear your experience with dueting and embodied interbeing.
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?
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
more info on the war tax resistance movement: https://nwtrcc.org/resist/war-tax-resistance/
committed to engaging with this workshop in community — PALESTINE/ISRAEL, THE CHURCH & U.S. EMPIRE: Understanding this Moment on the Frontlines https://www.landjusticefutures.org/video-library/v/palestineisrael-the-church-us-empire-understanding-this-moment-on-the-frontlines