Dab Float Flick Wring Press Slash Glide Punch

Happy Marching into who knows what's next. To start my day yesterday I moved through my space using Laban's eight efforts to the sounds of The Juju Orchestra, and then I read half of a collection of short stories by George Saunders, Liberation Day. Laundry tumbled in the dryer, then was folded, we went for a walk, groceries were purchased and put away for the week. In short, we had the sort of day we take for granted. The kind I worry are numbered.

This weekend I attended a funeral. I had to switch over my pocketbooks, and in the changeover I went with a bag that had my slide whistle tucked inside one of the compartments. You never know when a slide whistle may be needed. The two hour trip to the funeral was a trip back in time, a homecoming, and all day feeling of deep and abiding love. I cried slide whistle tears most of the day. I ate two of the most delicious pierogie served to me by a classmate of my sister's, talked to my former school bus driver (he's been driving a bus for 49 years!), shared theatre stories with family friends, and heard the most moving love story. I stood in the wind high up on the hill in the cemetery, with my ear covered as the snow spit sideways, wishing I'd worn my winter coat, feeling once again, underprepared, but with a slide whistle.

The funeral felt like a hug from the friend who died. His last words to me when I saw him two weeks ago were, "It's going to be ok." I want to believe him. I'm trying. His ability to make others feel good, to lift others up and build community was so strong it ripples out still after his death.

How can we know anything?  We don't. We can't. There's faith. Hope. People doing small acts of good in a world full of muck and mire. 

This morning my car won't start. A dead battery. I craned around to see if there were jumper cables in the back seat. Nope. But there's a pool noodle, for keening.

February's Foolhearty Give-It-a-Go

Everything is an experiment, including you. What a relief, right? Here's a little exercise I really enjoy. It's fine to try in in a public space (I did it at work and got a bemused chortle), but it's better to be alone to start. You'll feel less self-conscious and will follow your instincts rather than whatever it is your mind tells you. This a chance to let whatever feelings are in you now to have a voice, form, and movement:

Make a wordless noise. Any noise (don't overthink, let whatever bubbles up be the sound), and then after repeating it a few times, find a movement that goes with it. What part of your body instinctively wants to move to that sound? It can be small (just a foot, or an eyebrow), or your whole body. Make the sound and movement until you tire of it, or it turns into another sound and movement.

If you have time, write a little about the experience. 

How do you feel? Did any sounds/movements feel like characters emerging? Did you find yourself thinking "what should come next" or did you find your internal chatter quiet down? How does everything around you appear now? What, if anything, has shifted? 

Sweet Beast

The half-formed idea is the thirteen legged beast I wrestle with everywhere these days. On trips to the supermarket I see a flash of its tail curl into aisle D, in the shower it hogs all the soap, and when I'm just drifting off to sleep it scratches me with a scaly toenail to say, "Hey, still here," as if I needed the reminder. I'm thinking of you, half-formed idea, all of the time.

It has no face. It has no name. Naming it would make it real, and it is not ready to be real yet. As un-whole (and unholy) as it is, it can be anything. All thirteen of its legs are full of potential. It may walk! It may run! It may fly! Maybe the legs are set to transform into wings. Or eggplants. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

I am building a one woman show with no words. I have just my body, and some props, which start to take on the feel of "visual aids" sometimes as I work, like I'm just handing these object ideas to the half-formed idea beast and it is holding them up for the class to see and wonder over. Here's an onion. It represents layers. Here's a ball of twine. It represents, I don't know, something. Ugh.

This is my creative process, and on good days I cheer myself on with the notion that having this restriction is a catalyst, not a conundrum.

I think my mother may feel the same way about her aphasia. It's kind of just right, building this show this way, a this time in my life. My mother's words are eroding, but we've developed a personal sign language for communicating. When vocabulary is evasive, movement speaks. Our pantomimes almost always end in some good laughs. Aphasia has moments of serendipity, and plenty of opportunities for creative problem solving. Sometimes she's up for that, and others, not. I get it.

Today I spent two hours rolling around on the floor of the garage, exploring Barteneiff's Fundamentals of Movement -- breath support, initiation, sequencing, alignment and connections, body organization, ground, weight shifts, spatial intent. It's great to know the terms, but I don't think of them as I move, I just move. I become more aware of how my body moves, how it changes in feeling as I walk or stand after experimenting. Today I felt a little like DaVinci's Vetruvian Man.

Then I got thirsty, distracted by heat, and my head pounded. The beast returned to drag me back to the hellscape of doubt, which I'm pretty sure is made up entirely of positive internet memes.

All functional movement is expressive. Think about that the next time you bend your neck to look at your phone, or pick up a chair and walk across a room with it. Your body is always telling a story, is always revealing your inner life, whether you like it or not. What a tattletale. What a sweet beast, the idea of the body as storyteller.