Category Archives: writing

Jan5

the archival warrior

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Photo:  Nick Novick from White Dreams, Wild Moon by Paula Josa-Jones

I have been culling my digital files.  And the day before I went through my costume archive.  Emptying the trash is a theme.  I want my waters clear, not muddied by what I no longer need.  Not even what I thought I might need some day, maybe, just in case.  I feel like an archival warrior. The digital files are easier.  One click.

The costumes are harder.  I remember who wore them, the feel of the movement that they held, the passionate conversations that resulted in their creation.  I have probably ten large plastic bins.  I emptied two.  You never know when you will need those Creon headdresses, or a pig’s nose . . .

In my digital culling, I found this, written about ten years ago.  It was from a letter to a friend.  “I read this morning in the book In the Lap of the Buddha by Gavin Harrison, that Chogyam Trunga Rinpoche talks about the idea of warriorship as that which is sad and tender, because with those qualities the warrior can be very brave as well.  ‘For the warrior this experience of the sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness.  It comes from letting the world tickle your raw and beautiful heart.'”

I feel like this sifting review is just that:  looking at the ways the world has tickled my raw and beautiful heart.  Letting that in again, in a feeling way.  I found, for instance, the words that I spoke at my mother’s memorial.  Sad and tender.  A couple weeks ago, Pam wrote a piece called my mother’s ashes about finding a heart shaped ashtray that she had made for her mother when she was eight. There’s the fearless part.

I am interested in the way that memory and memento shape what is blooming here, now.  I wrote a Journal piece about that last week called “An Archival Being.”  This week I am taking a dive into what Pico Iyer, writing about Graham Greene, calls “fundamental trembling.”  Another ragged little memoir.  (If you subscribe this week, I will send you last week’s Journal free.)

Speaking of Pico Iyer, I also found this jewel:  The Joy of Quiet.  I think, actually, that may be what all of this culling is about.  Stillness in all of that movement.

What are you holding?  What are you releasing?

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Dec31

the sun on my neck

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I was outside yesterday with the dogs.  It was one of those odd balmy December days we have been having.  I was not wearing a scarf.  I felt the sun on my neck.  At first I thought it was a kinesthetic memory from a different season, summer, say, then realized it was actually the winter sun warming my neck in this deep, lovely way.  I think that sensation is a key to expressing my wishes for the new year.

 

May I feel the sun on my neck

the warmth of

fur under my hand

my daughters’ smiles

my lover’s arms

and my own eager heart

pushing into the layers of each day.

I want to thank all of you for reading and I wish each of you a most fresh and delicious New Year.

Dec16

being well

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Wellness that is being allowed, or the wellness that is being denied, is all about the mindset, the mood, the attitude, the practiced thoughts. There is not one exception, in any human or beast; because, you can patch them up again and again, and they will just find another way of reverting back to the natural rhythm of their mind. Treating the body really is about treating the mind. It is all psychosomatic. Every bit of it, no exceptions.  Abraham, Philadelphia, PA, 5/13/2002

 

This week in The Journal, I am writing about dreams.  About flying and landing and taking off.  What lifts us up and what takes us down.  You can join me here.

Dec11

an imaginary audience

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Paula Josa-Jones in Russian Ghostdance

This week, I am thinking, feeling and writing a lot about performing. I write about it in this week’s Journal.

I have been working with two artists recently as coach, choreographer and director.  Both have one woman shows.  I love this part of my work – bringing my eye to their work and helping them to deepen and open.

That work has also awakened my desire to perform.  In the past, many of my performances involved deep disguise.  Ways of hiding in plain sight.  I wonder how this new creation will reveal, what/who is waiting to be seen.  Performing has always been about revealing a part of myself that I cannot show in the daylight world.  The dark side, the inside, the wild side; underlayers, like showing my psychic petticoats.

Writing the daily post is also a performance.  But unlike the theater, where I can hear you (the audience) rustle and breathe, where I can calibrate my performance by how I am sensing an audience on a given night, this performance is for a largely imaginary audience.

But here’s the thing:  before the relationship with the audience comes the relationship with myself; with the impulse to create, to shape something new and delicious, something that I can savor.

Flight attendants always tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.  Same thing here.