in the small things...

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Warm enough to keep the windows open now, hear the voices from other houses, children crying, families sitting to dinner. Swallows call to each other in the evening air, summer is just around the corner. Rainy days of spring, new flowers, white roses. People whistling opera tunes in the street. Working with the earth, smelling it on my hands. Dreams of past lovers, dreams of future lovers. My brother coming to visit. Libraries, restlessness.

thoughts - new life and old rituals

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Two newborns, now a few days ago. Beautiful news, a couple that was getting too old, worried they'd never have children. Twins, a boy and a girl.
And around the miracle of life I notice something new. Actually, something old, as old as the first family on Earth. As old as humanity.
Beneath the varnish of twenty-first century western behavioural patterns. Rituals that still accompany every rite of passage, rituals that keep the community close-knit, that make family feel as tribe. Rituals for death, rituals for love, rituals for life.
The twins are not just their parents'. They are part of all of us. I feel like it was all of us giving birth: me, my cousins, my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. All of us then together, as if hugging in a circle over the real mother, as if protecting her in her vulnerability.
And no, I didn't forget the men. I didn't forget because it wasn't their role to play. Or so it feels. The news of the birth was passed from woman to woman. And, even though my blood relation in this case is to the father, my uncle, I didn't contact him. I contacted the mother. Because it is the natural way for things to happen.
It was all through us, the birth, the news, the fussing (did they cry, are their eyes open, do they have hair, how much do they weigh).
As it is all through the women with death. I'm thinking of the ritual processions of women crying in ancient Roman funerals. I'm thinking of my grandmother holding on to a coffin. Women as bearers of the history of a family, women as storytellers, women as the structure of civilisation.

easter dream - totems and dust

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The last dream this morning was of the desert. Not really a dune desert...more like a very arid country in the summer months. Dry grass, wind and dust. A lot of people. Graffiti and houses inside the ground, in the rock. With spray-paint graffiti. Like a rave in the desert. And people go in the graffiti caves, but I know there are wild dogs in there. Rabid dogs, a pack, like the ones in India, howling and going mad in the night. There's a lot of light out, the air is dry, I smell the dust.
And I wake up and I have no time to think about it. There's a lot of light out. I dash out of the house to have breakfast with my parents. Easter tradition.
Almost there, I pass by a playground. A crow's call, higher than the music in my earphones, gets my attention. I turn, and they're both there, the cat and the crow, one on the ground, the other just landing on a high branch. And the cat leaves through the back gate, but the crow stays. Perfect profile, black against the new spring green.
I think of my dream again, of the dogs in the cave. Of the light.

learning to let go

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Everyone who's ever played an instrument, painted, wrote, performed any physical activity, or even just spent a night dancing in a club knows what the 'flow' is. That condition of leaving behind your sentient self and distracting thoughts, and entering a different state of being, in which actions come automatically and art produces itself.
So the flow is actually not that difficult to feel, for a few seconds or a few hours, but really I suppose it is always present, even if dulled by the mind's constant noise, external disturbances, our own self-doubt. Always present in us, like outside of us it makes the planets turn and the sea rise and fall.

The problem is...what happens when the flow is interrupted, deviated?
This is something that I've been working on constantly now, for months. I've been aware of something being wrong for years. Like a snake sheds its skin, a woman's body transforms itself each month. We are reborn every time through blood. This is the highest expression of our flow, our cycle.
And it's as if my body didn't know how to do that, or didn't want to. I knew all along but only after India the situation has escalated, my body is screaming for me to do something. This disturbance in my energy flow has been showing up in my performance, in my behaviour, in my emotions, but also physically, to the point in which while dancing the floors vibration gets locked in my feet causing painful inflammation.
I'm not sure how this started, how the different elements interconnect, but my blood, my feet, my dance, are all suffering from this.

I chose to ask for help, and started working on the problem. Everything, everyone I've been talking to, my dreams, signs I see around me, everything leads me to the same solution.
Learning to let go. Learning to let my feet talk to the ground, rise and fall without my trying to control them.
Learning to let go of my body, because it knows itself what's best.
Learning to let go of my thoughts, of self-judgment.
Learning to let go of judgment from others, of hurt.
Learning to forgive.
Learning to trust. The dance, the flow, my body, movement.

It's a long process and it can't be hurried. The body has its rhythms and messing with them will only make things worse. But I see progress. I trust. I heal.

snakes day

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St Patrick's day...the one who drove the snakes from Ireland, legend says.

But I’m always on the side of the snakes, and i’ve been seeing them everywhere lately.

So I'm not wearing green today, but wearing snakes on my arms.

And I'm not celebrating the conquering monotheistic faiths, but the coming of spring and the gods of freedom and ecstasy.