I was just musing with Jeanne Hopkins yesterday about how the second year didn’t seem to be so hard, and what was her experience, and why that might be so, and if I might be missing something.
The proverbial calm before the storm. In the Creative Movement class, I was getting in touch with some moody, gray emotional weather, which every day seemed that I could manage. Until this morning. We were doing some responses to our classmates verbal directions and then we got a sheet to consider the types of moves there were and our little vignette centered around our collage, and to consider expanding the vocabulary of moves in the vignette. I had started getting deeply emotional before then, as no matter what I tried to do , there was some part of me that was hurting and stopped me. The sheet of paper was the last straw - and I couldnt’ take the irony - consider expanding my vocabulary of moves when all I have been living for 30 + yrs is an ever shrinking one. The tears started in a stream, and I either was going to have to leave or just be emotional in public. I wanted to shrink into a little hole and disappear. Even the little dance I had sort of made around my vignette was kaput - there was no way I could do it with the pains in the neck, back, feet. I could barely stand up or get to floor much less move between the two. I was left with the option of “dancing” with what was left of me. I picked a group that wasn’t using music because there was no music to describe my dance space. I opened from my little curled ball and writhed on floor, tried to get a way up, slowly working my way on to my feet. It seems so much more fluid to write than it was. It wasn’t a movement about fluidity. Often I started a move and had to freeze due to shooting pains somewhere. It was a halt-move-halt compas of contortion.
Afterward there was some time for discussion, which I didn’t have much intention of participating in as I was sitting off the floor half under a table, holding myself together = sort of . The water works had been going non-stop now for about 40 minutes. I was on the periphery until XXXX mentioned that we all were doing moves so much better than we ever dreamed of - to which I had to just pipe up and keep it honest and clarify that in my case that just was NOT SO. Karen K. asked me if I wanted to talk about it. I did and I didn’t. It was one truly authentic moment in my life when I was just as I really am. It was all out there - even when I let myself voice the scream of my primal self when asked if I was mourning …. duh.
I feel a big “so what” now. Nothing has changed - a few more people know a bit more about who I once was. It is such ancient history, except to my soul. It was just a moment ago in the timespace of my heart. Living as half a person for three days or thirty years seems irrelevant. All of the wisdoms I have earned the hard way are no less true. I am thankful for my life, in and of itself. But the memories of Before are not dimmed. The soul still speaks of the magic of tasting flight for more than a few fleeting moments. When you’ve supped ambrosia at the table with the gods, wine and water will slake the thirst - and no vintage no matter how exquisite will ever compare. I connected my experience on the level of mythology of being thrown off Mount Olympus - interesting where that line of comparison might go.
