A Quickie

Hello! I am about to dash off again because it's the New York DNE Weekend. Helped with get the site set up and danced quite bit which was great. Was up very late last night, slept in a bit and now am hoping to make it back to the site to catch lunch, my breakfast.

Yesterday was a slow but speedy sort of day catching up on things and also not under a lot of pressure for the weekend in other ways. As Scott said last night, "we have not overtly f*cked up, so it's a success". My bar is way higher and I already have a long set of notes structure ideas for next year, because that's how my brain works.

Unlikely that I will take classes today but will have a lovely time catching up with folks and doing oversight.

Ta ta for now!*

*Who says this? Consider yourself getting life bonus points if you know.

I {heart} Rob Brezny

I just read my horoscope for this week and while I would have preferred to do without the rending of a dream, hope, etc that I have experienced, his words give me added hope.

Since Thursday late in the afternoon I have been at NCDC and it has exceeded my expectations and wishes that a change of scenery would do me good. It is a good community to dive into, lots of wonderful people, renewing connections, forming new ones. My heart has been touched, my body has felt powerful, my laughter has been plentiful.

Rob's words for this week:

What have you lost in recent months, Libra?
This week begins a phase when you will have the potential to not exactly
recover it, but rather to re-create it on a higher level. Maybe a dream that
seemed to unravel was simply undergoing a reconfiguration, and now
you're primed to give it a new and better form of expression. Maybe a
relationship that went astray was merely dying so it could get
resurrected, with more honesty and flexibility this time around.

Let the dance begin

Thursday afternoon I was lucky enough to get a ride with a total stranger to camp. We had a nice drive to the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is a bit mind blowing to be in Fresno at about 400 feet above sea level and the next time you see a sign you're at about 1500. In increments of about 10 minutes while driving we were quickly at 2000, 3000, and 4000. The camp itself is at about 4500.

Unfortunately I foolishly thought it would be easy breezy to use my phone to get on the internet, now that this site has cell coverage - previously no carrier had a signal up here. I should have tested things and figured it out while still in Berkeley. An ounce of forethought would have saved me 17 tons of anxiety and I would not have lost 10 hours (at least!) of solid work time. Sleep was hard to come by, tossing and turning on the air mattress I gave up and was out of bed at 4am Friday morning. It was a total disaster and I was unable to work until Friday around 2pm, campers were to begin to check in at 4:30.

The upside is that I was able to work finally, no campers really noticed there was any snafu, and by Saturday evening by 7:30pm I had caught up on work for Dance New England for a delayed deadline. Napping in the late afternoon increased my productivity and my mood. Even better is that I got some dancing in the first night, and tonight. Tonight, even better than dancing was this lovely stretching session I had on the dance floor. Being in my body, stretching, with moving bodies, excellent music surrounding me is like a form of meditation. I didn't even realize how much I had gone to another place until I was done and rising from the floor. It is amazing to feel the body respond in such a short period of time; this gives me hope that I can get back to a greater level of flexibility if I just can do this consistently.

Tonight it so much colder, the temperatures started dropping around 6:30. It's funny I just looked up the actual weather and by my east coast dance camp standards it's ridiciously warm but quite some time ago I noticed how different one temperature can feel based on so many things. Tonight I think I will be wearing a hat as well as clothes while in my sleeping bag.

In general I feel comfortable here, comfortable here as a single person - when was the last time I was at a dance camp single?? Way longer than I want to acknowledge. This camp is about half the size of my other one which makes it sweet and contained. I think it's a good way for me to reintegrate into myself to where I am now in the world. It occurred to me that I have danced in four states since being on my own - New Paltz at the Frolic, twice; Dance Friday in Boston; Club Masque in Dayton; and now at NCDC. This is so much better a life style for me!

Tonight I was talking to a friend here at camp, someone who I really clicked with last year - almost like a sister I forgot I had or a childhood friend happily rediscovered - upon telling her that I left Ohio on the spring equinox she noted that we were at the summer solstice hence I have moved through a season. What a wonderful observation and what a season it has been! It is a little mind boggling to realize I have been on this new path for 3 months, literally and figuratively. I am feeling more inside, more in touch with myself and at the same time more expansive with my interactions with other people. This is all really good, and good to remember when the moments of sadness take over, when the doubt settles in and when the unmoored feeling disorients me.

Peace out!

Delight

It's been a long few days here at Dance New England, very busy, a fair bit of drama, and lots of hugs. One of the things that I enjoy the most besides actually dancing is watching the people here move. Tonight, just a bit ago a passel of our young adults, most who have been mostly raised coming to camp, came to the dance. This is a new thing.

The teens and those "raised" in DNE often skip our dance or come further into the event when the pull of the rest of world has stopped calling us adults weird or they realize this is not a place they have pull away from everyone five or more years older than them drops away. It's the first full day here and here they were. Dancing, laughing in a rough circle. Working up a sweat as Rob, who just the other day stated he has been coming since he was kicking in the womb (true!), whipped off his shirt. How cool - dancing that hard, the ease of removal no big deal. The music changed from a techno kind of piece into a number from the Nutcracker and what happened is what often occurs when such a piece is thrown in - as if it was choreographed people elegantly drifted in to a ring that circumnavigated the room. The young adults joined, everyone became part of a whole, the music lifting everyone into one mind but many bodies playing with the notes differently but still unified in a directional flow.

Whoops and applause followed. As the music turned bluesy, a rich and thick rendition of the classic Summertime by Gershwin. It was beautiful but I had to write this image before it was gone, not erased but overlaid with the next hundred beautiful moments that could happen before I might write again. I started another entry two days that still has not seen the light of blog. It is after 2am and bed would make sense, but a stop at the dining hall might beckon, or perhaps not.

Down came Humpty

Well I was feeling all good and stuff. But yesterday the cranky came upon me and this morning is feeling like it's taken permanent residence. So much for the "balanced" me Andi saw that first Sunday back from camp. The crabby, uneasy me is back in town and has making me (and TGF) miserable.

Some of it is, I think, not enough physical outlets. I am missing the opportunity to dance like I haven't missed it in years. Thought about going down to Riverscape in downtown to check out the free Zumba class, but it's already warm and muggy out. Being unmotivated has left me ignoring DNE work, abashedly shirking home improvement projects, and my knitting lies in heaps in a various bags. The only thing that remains consistent is the two of us taking Wyatt on a walk for at least 30 minutes every day.

I just feel like blah. There is much to do, but instead I am aimless and worried. Yesterday while chatting while drinking a yummy Green Tea Mango drink at Boston Stoker after scoring some cheap vintage yarn (for the second time in a week!) I said to Dawn maybe I would assign myself a weekly blog assignment by going through my bookmark folder titled "Writing Ideas". Assuming the links still inspire of course. Sounds like such a good idea, right? Yeah sure. Maybe next week I will be brimming up with ideas and spouting off posts right and left.

Okay, my goal for today is to do DNE work. Really and truly. Yeah the Appalachian Festival is today and so is the Cajun Festival but it's dark out and not inspiring. Tonight is the July Porch and Patio party which I was so looking forward to but now...well not so much. The rain has just started....

It's me, it's you. Nope, it's me.

Various sources say different things about dreams - all the players are you, or all the players are someone, even if not the person they seem. I find that it is often a mix because quite frankly I usually prefer sex with others rather than by myself and I just can't see me turning me on that much, even in a dream. I will own that some of the scenarios are fantasies of mine but that is not the same as wanting to make love to myself.

Last night I had a hard time falling asleep, not uncommon, especially these days; but what is more uncommon is it felt like I had two separate dreams, interrupted by a period of wakefulness, that seemed like a part of one and two. At least I think there were really two dreams that fell on either side of lying awake analyzing the dream.

The dreams involved trying without any success, to reach my friend ACL. The dream was about her because I feel out of touch with her, though it's only been a few days since we had contact but I know this is going to be a common state. We met while at NCDC and connected very deeply, talking for hours at a time, dancing together and just being quiet. She's a busy woman and I hope to be, so this is all the way things are. Also life at camp, whether NCDC or DNE, is not real life and one can connect with people (like ACL and JE) very deeply but it is not a state that often is continued when one reenters the rest of their life.

It is also not about her at all but is about me. I had some absolutely deeply powerful times at camp and headed home with a desire to find time to at least attempt those states while in my "real" life. I wrote about the meditative states, the deep emotions that I allowed myself to sit with while there. What I didn't write about was how very often being at camp (apparently either one) I often feel more connected to my body. I eat better thanks to the amazing cooking of Charlie & Marion along with the rest of their cooks. I am outdoors more. My wardrobe is more me than it can be say tomorrow when I have a one-day temp stint at a medical facility where I think I will remove my nose ring or change it for a stud. But perhaps the biggest piece at camp is dancing. At NCDC I danced more at the evening boogies than usual. Even better was Wednesday night where I got to that place where I stop thinking about my lack of technique, stop bemoaning how much training has ebbed away, stop caring about what I look like and just move. Explore what my body can do, go deep inside and just flow, play. It was an amazing, amazing night for me. I danced so much my legs got wobbly. I danced so much I was high. Tired in that perfect way.

Since I have been back I have stretched, done some yoga and spent far too much time on tribe.net searching out links, events, anything to middle eastern dance more than any other subject. Sure I love middle eastern dance, but it's not all I want to do. I signed up for an essentially dead Hoop Ohio tribe in vain hope (something I want to learn). There are far too many yoga tribes for me to figure out where to go and I'm still not sure what I think of yoga. Perhaps I just need to find the right form of yoga. I did really like the place I went to in Brooklyn NY a million years ago. I desperately want more money flowing into Green Jay so we can catch up on bills but also so I can go DO things like this.

In The Women's Book of Creativity another chapter I recently read spoke of how to carve out time alone, for meditation. Of course she like so many others talk about a separate room, or a even a corner of a room. I am not sure how to designate such a space and I suspect part of my block of imagination is that I'm not sure how much I would use it so how can I claim such a piece of real estate in our home. Clearly this is an excuse because of course I can, the bigger question is will I use it and if I don't will I feel like I have failed. The true answer is I will use it occasionally in all likelihood and that any use is a success, non-use is simply an opportunity not taken but not failure.

So while my dreams were about missing a connection with a new friend, they were even more about worry about my connection to myself. I guess this makes this post meta-navel gazing - writing about a blog (a high tech form of n.g.) in which the entry is all about how I want to be a better me. Yeesh.

Doing the proverbial cartwheel

It is a relatively small thing, it really is when one considers all that is going on in my world right now. Between watching a clip on YouTube of a guy dancing (they are both so graceful) that reminded of an old pal and suddenly hearing an old song of "ours" that we used to dance to, I developed the itch to find him. We haven't spoken in almost exactly four years. We lose touch, reconnect, fade out, reconnect. It's a cycle.

We met about twenty years ago, give or take at Barefoot Boogie, a continuing tradition of which I am a founding mama. Yes I was 12 when I started this. Shut up and do not do any math. I have many fond memories of us dancing together, hanging out, talking on the phone all night while we pretended to study - I had just started college (I was also a child genius. Again, shush!) and he was a consistent student. Since that time, when he finishing a BA with a double major, he also received an MPIA (Masters in Pacific International Affairs) and then a JD. He passed the New York Bar on the first try. I knew he was still playing competitive bridge from trying to find him on the web over the years. He was also involved in Model United Nations stuff for years and years. Did I mention he's a bit of a genius? And a classic Gemini.

So the other day I tried emailing him at the address named for his penchant of creating frozen alcoholic yumminess. Today I got an email back from him. If I could do cartwheels I would have done them across the entire house. Because of him I have started a Skype account though I need to buy the headphone thingys. It will be handy because he travels a lot. Really. In today's emails he told me is leaving for London later this week and then he's off to Bulgaria. Sounds like the same old guy, never in one place for long.

I cannot wait to hear his voice again. I so want him and TGF to meet!!!
Doing a happy dance all day over this.