Category Archives: improvisation life

Apr24

clouds

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I found this image many months ago and tucked it into a blogpost draft. Yesterday, when scanning my drafts, I looked at it again and thought about clouds and about sky and about the big view, the way light illuminates and hides what is present, and about what happens when the big clouds of misfortune and sorrow roll in.

There is no way to look at these clouds and see only sorrow and misfortune. There is also depth, color, movement, light, glory.  These clouds are also scary – potent with the possibility of storm and the lightening strikes of death and dismemberment.  The sky is black, the source of the light is hidden.

Sometimes the clouds are so overwhelming that we must dive down, press ourselves against the earth, shiver there.  Jungian Marion Woodman says that to learn humility we must lay flat on the ground, feel the living pulse of the earth, to know that you are part of that pulse.

 

 

 

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Apr22

poem for the broken-hearted

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Jack Hirschman “Path” (2 of 5) – 2006 Poet Laureate of San Francisco from One Night Music on Vimeo.

 

Path

Go to your broken heart.

If you think you don’t have one, get one.

To get one, be sincere.

Learn sincerity of intent by letting

life enter because you’re helpless, really,

to do otherwise.

Even as you try escaping, let it take you

and tear you open

like a letter sent

like a sentence inside

you’ve waited for all your life

though you’ve committed nothing.

Let is send you up.

Let it break you, heart.

Broken-heartedness is the beginning

of all real reception.

The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.

See the gates opening.

Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,

your mouth opening like a womb

giving birth to your voice for the first time.

Go singing whirling into the glory

of being ecstatically simple.

Write the poem.

— Jack Hirschman

 

Thank you Polly Styron for this one.

Apr12

when what is most precious is lost — for my daughter

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blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton
(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back    may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Mar24

light coming through

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For the past three days I have been working with my autistic godson Jacob.  Because my new grand baby daughter Laila has been visiting for the past month, I have been revisiting the developmental and systems work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. 

Body-Mind Centering® is an integrated and embodied approach to movement, the body and consciousness. Developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, it is an experiential study based on the embodiment and application of anatomical, physiological, psychophysical  and developmental principles, utilizing movement, touch, voice and mind. Its uniqueness lies in the specificity with which each of the body systems can be personally embodied and integrated, the fundamental groundwork of developmental repatterning, and the utilization of a body-based language to describe movement and body-mind relationships.

I have been using touch and movement focusing on the fluids and on awakening some old developmental patterns that are missing in Jacob.  The results have been breathtaking over the past three days.  Jacob has started to be much more intentional and specific in his use of focus, much more deliberate in the way he walks and has begun to modulate the speed with which he moves.  It is like seeing the sun come out and illuminate the landscape in new ways.

The other half of this is that it requires us – his parents and me – to be softly and clearly intentional  and aware of what we are offering with touch, voice and movement.  So all of us are awakening to ourselves in new ways – a beautiful,breathing, improvisational reciprocity and opportunity moment-to-moment.  An invitation to see thing from a different perspective and invite ourselves more fully into the dance.  Thank you Jacob!