We are paired like this
one looking forward
the other looking at
the one
who is leaning a little
in as if the wind had
caught her sails
gently, for a moment
bending her toward.
the one looking in.
she is steadfast, seeing
the one and beyond,
holding both the moment
and what is coming.
Driving Through the Wind River Reservation: A Poem of Black Bear by Mary Oliver.
from Dream Work
In the time of snow, in the time of sleep.
The rivers themselves changed into links
of white iron, holding everything. Once
she woke deep in the leaves under
the fallen tree and peered
through the loose bark and saw him:
a tall white bone
with thick shoulders, like a wrestler,
roaring the saw-toothed music
of wind and sleet, legs pumping
up and down the hills.
Well, she thought, he’ll wear himself out
running around like that.
She slept again
while he drove on through the trees,
snapping off the cold pines, grasping,
rearranging over and over
the enormous drifts. Finally one morning
the sun rose up like a pot of blood
and his knees buckled.
Well, she whispered from the leaves,
that’s that. In the distance
the ice began to boom and wrinkle
and a dampness
that could not be defeated began
to come from her, her breathing
enlarged, oh, tender mountain, she rearranged
herself so that the cubs
could slide from her body, so that the rivers
would flow.
Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
“You’ve got to give before you get. You cannot expect to receive generous rewards and then decide what to give in return. You must give freely and have faith that the rewards will eventually come.” Napoleon Hill
I spent the weekend in Boston rehearsing a new dance work with Ingrid Schatz and DeAnna Pellecchia. Two full days in the studio, diving into movement, trying things out, looking for the light, for heat, for brilliance. I was reminded of what Alex Webb says about taking photographs: that you may take hundreds and only one will be wonderful. I have more patience and faith in that process now than five, ten or twenty years ago. What has to be there, every time, is willingness and teachability. My own and my collaborators. If that is missing, then we are caught in the sands of resistance, and I am pretty clear that I do not have the time or energy for that.
Directing and parenting and partnering are interestingly related for me. In all of them, there is listening, opening, guiding, loving. With directing and dancemaking, it is loving the process, loving the work and the workers, even when it is awkward and raw, unformed and murky. I am old enough to have a lot of staying power, and a pretty handy toolkit. I am also more attentive to the guidance of my heart. That is really important when starting a new project. The heart has to be there to keep things pulsing, to support the whole system of the making. And the heart has to guide toward truth, toward a kind of inevitability in the outcome. Meaning that when we see the final work, it feels as if nothing else could have happened.
Back to giving. With directing and parenting and partnering that means that I hold nothing back. And that reminds me of this from Annie Dillard in The Writing Life
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book: give it, give it all, give it now. the impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
