A Researcher Emerges

I have been deliberately elusive about my research, because it is a wonderful multi-sided diamond with a soft flowing center of love, and those gems are difficult to articulate. This is the third system to capture my attention, and capture it enough to hold it for the rest of my life; the first being modern dance and the second polarity therapy. I am at the juncture of artist-healer-scholar, and it is a common juncture in all actuality.
Several role models come to mind whom held the same nexus of being in their life's work...without hesitation the core of early modern dance pioneers: Ruth St. Dennis, Isadora Duncan, Hanya Holm, Pearl Primus, Katherine Dunham, and many others. They were part of the great opening in the 1920's running parallel to the growth of body-mind practices including Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement. Also at this time great interest in healing flowered and included works by thinkers such as Jethro Kloss, Dr. Sutherland, and Dr. Randolph Stone. Running holistic sanitariums and eclectic schools for drugless healing, these men were at the forefront of the current east-west melding in medicine (which in my opinion will explode into ripeness in the next 30 years).
A more recent role model is the lovely lady Sharon Rose. I highly recommend her book Path of the Priestess. She is really the only contemporary I have found who is spot on. Vincent Mantsoe is another modern dancer currently bridging shamanistic "trance" and the stage through is mother's healing lineage.
The whole point is, the whirling Mevlevi group I am working with in London is part of a larger system connecting movement, the body, breath, thought, and social interaction. They are an eclectic group of artists, healers, and dancers, among other things, and I have fallen in love with their ways. I know that I am in England just so, just so I can be here with them and birth my own life's work in relationship.
Not once have I doubted the still quiet voice inside of me, and it is that same still voice which guided all those pioneers before me. It is good to be in good company.

Roll on Summer

Ahh, I thought I would have to live without the real feeling of summer here! Today it is warm, humidity is high, cloud pressure dense, little black bugs saturate the bike paths, garden is growing out of hand, sheets hanging on the line dried within an hour, light light light permeates every corner and shadow, and we are sticky with the juice of juicilicious honeydews, yum!!! Kaiah and Kevin went to the westerly tip of Wales, Holyhead Island, for their yearly male bonding trip. Four days of camping and hiking at the height of summer solstice, more yum. The kids and I did nothing but sleep and hang out in a pasture by the mill downtown all weekend, super yum. Made friends with a fisherman and the kids put bait on his line and helped reel in the little creek fish. I can hear the click click of women's heels on the pavement outside my window, cars and motorcycles zoom by down the road, someone is running a lot of water, and the cat meows from the windowsill at cooing doves. Now, off to burn incense and cook up Indian lentils, cauliflower, and potatoes. Smells and feels and sounds of summer~

Country Fair

Happiness is a big brother!

Delicate Flower

With Kaiah here this first week I am just stunned with the delicateness of life. Resilient and delicate. The grief I processed over 9 months since leaving NC, he is now encountering in his own self. Where does he return to, what is the constant, how much change can a body undergo in a lifetime? It is good. We are swimming and breakdancing together, and he is sleeping alot. Here is commiseration with the beauty and strength of the flower, the spider strand, the mother child connection.

Much Gentle Love ~

Peace

Just thinking about what happened in the 1960's and where we are now, how the big changes mellowed and integrated, and somewhat dissapointed. Horray for women's rights though! That was a lasting cornerstone. It just leads me to the notion that peace is rather elusive. Searching, and trying for cooperation, and celebrating the moments when we can connect and create beauty, that's it. It dosen't get any better than those little wonderful moments...because, maye if it did, we'd stop searching and trying. Piece~

Wholeness

!! Kaiah is here !!