Finding the balance

The feeling of being replaced, or replacable. It's funny how capable and empowered with the ability to choose we can feel in our stronger moments and how incapable and disempowered we can feel in our weaker ones. There is only one of us in all the universe and we are unique and special, yet it is true how replacable we are. Is love being courageous enough to truly give one's all, to commit completely knowing that it will not last forever? That people don't last forever, nor do feelings. That feeling when you recognize yourself or something about yourself in another. That feeling when you just get someone and their intentions are recognizable, whether or not they ever come to fruition. That feeling when you understand what a person is trying to get at even though they don't explicitly come out and say it. It's funny what motivates people. When you sit and listen, you'll notice a lot. How often do we gift each other the opportunity to just sit and listen though? Or act spontaneously? Or not feel the need to fill the silence up with sounds or distractions or small talk. How people develop and the things that give their lives meaning are interesting. If we keep digging th things that we bring to the surface are very interesting. Beneath the layers, digging up bones, resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Here's some ideas for charaters: 1. all small talk, doesn't like to get too deep or think too much about anything. fills the silence with meaningless chatter or pointless distractions that ultimately lead to an exisence spent finding new ways to distract herself. 2. the too deep thinker, who wonders why and is on an ineitable search for meaning and depth. Enjoys deep, existental conversations about 3. the lifelong leaner, always wanting to learn and master the next great thing without ever taking the time to foster meaningful releationships so the work and art is ultimately very technical but devoi of emotion. Finding the balance.

Jams

Remembering. For as along as I can remember I have really loved “jams.” Not the kind you make from strawberries, but those events that draw likeminded people together to improv and play without much formal instruction. I think this affinity started long before I can remember, sitting around with family telling stories, making music, and entertaining each other through “family shows.” Always being drawn to movement communities, eventually this desire to share, grow, and create with others in a wild environment drew me to movement jams - parkour jams, contact improv jams, acro yoga jams, ecstatic dances, open gym nights, capoeira jams, fire jams, aerial jams, and many others. When these activities are able to occur outside and in environments that mirror their essentially wild nature then they feel extra special. This affinity also drew me into a world of festivals where I discovered whole communities of likeminded individuals eager to improv their way into creating something meaningful through other things like music, art, cooking, gardening, etc. Eventually, it also drew me to Austin and to many of the people, spaces, and communities that have been such an integral part of my life. I think that sometimes as we grow older and get “good,” or at least are told we are “good” at things, some of the magic became lost as the playing field feels no longer leveled and we ride the wave into growing and prospering as individuals. Getting back into jam mindset -where we can all grow learn, share, and become through and with each other is always such a beautiful process of self-reflection, benching the ego, and remembering to tend to the delicate balance of looking inward and gazing outward that fosters the most joyful existence possible. Individual self-growth and community building can go hand in hand. Figuring out the balance is a fun and sometimes difficult challenge. Over the years, I have been lucky to both facilitate and attend many different kinds of jams and it has been such a joy experiencing the growth that takes place within them. Navigating boundary lines and creating containers that allow for these events to exist is another interesting part of the process. I notice that keeping the value and purpose of jamming in our hearts can guide us towards the things that will allow us to manifest the events and ultimately the life that we want to create. Ultimately, I think that authentic expression through jam life leads to more resilient communities and a more connected world. And being able to trace something as simple as just sharing stories and playing music with family in the backyard to the people, events, and spaces that I feel drawn to today and wish to manifest tomorrow is the greatest joy.

Choices

The person who has hurt me the most is myself. And it is my choice to rise up and choose love and acceptance or sink down and speak from a place of fear and insecurity. My fearful self wants to tell others that they don’t matter. My love-filled self wants encourage others to express themselves and tell them that they matter a lot. It is always our choice which of these parts of ourselves gets expressed and over time, these expressions become who we are. The paradoxes and perplexities are infinite and I feel life is wanting me to learn some lesson -it’s coming at me in a hundred different ways, from all sides, trying to teach me. Something about adapting, change, commitment, love, acceptance, and security #life. and ultimately I would like to be the kind of person who operates from a place of love and understanding instead of fear and insecurity. I want us to lift each other up instead of bring each other down. I want our emotions and feelings to be valuable and for us to communicate and help each other act lovingly. I suppose it is a life long question how to remain open, understanding, compassionate, and loving while also wanting to feel safe, secure, and loved. How can we be open but also want certain things to be closed and off limits? I feel like I’ve made more mistakes in the past year than I have in all of my years combined. But I guess I am also grateful that these mistakes are my teachers and that I gained a lot of compassion having done things that I previously thought that I would never be capable of doing. In a sense, I needed my world to be shattered because I was holding on to it too tight. And I still have so much work to do, but I suppose that’s the art of life. There are so many paradigms that I have previously operated under that I feel shattering, in a good way. I feel like my whole perspective on performance art in general is shifting. I feel like my whole perspective on dualities is shifting. I feel my whole perspective on many things is shifting and if life is art then I suppose the art of it is remaining curious about these changes and learning how to dance with them. In a weird way it also makes me happy when we all love each other. I feel grateful to be forced into learning hard lessons and for so many chances to question and grow. I feel blessed to be in a community where we can express our love for each other. The paradigm of duality seems so riddled with fear and insecurity. But it also feels like a good opportunity to grow something strong and meaningful. I’m really not sure how I feel about it. I love that we can feel free to express our desires, emotions, concerns, etc. Anything I say that makes others feel undervalued is just a reflection of some fear or insecurity that is personal to me and I’m projecting it. I feel like life is wanting me to learn some lesson and is coming at me in a hundred different ways, from all sides, trying to teach me. Something about adapting, change, commitment, love, acceptance, security #life

improv

Yesterday the idea came up that when you are creating art it is an act of love to create something genuine and true and that it pays off, when improv-ing, to play complete attention to the other person, respond to them, sacrifice yourself and any preconceinved notion or premeditated idea that you have of how to act, move, or respond. Put the other completely before yourself. Anyway, when doing such monotonous tasks as vacuuming up Christmas tree needles, there were many times when I wanted to stop. There were so many needles. And I kept thinking to myself “well I’ve vacuumed enough and that’s probably good enough.” And with the tires; “well I’ve moved enough and organized them relatively well, so that’s good enough.” But good enough is not good enough. It’s not loving. It’s mediocre. And little monotonous tasks like vacuuming up Christmas tree needles or moving tires can teach you a thing or two about yourself. When good enough becomes good enough then it becomes a lifestyle. 

I brushed my hand over the carpet after going over the same spot with the vacuum again and again. There were still needles stuck in the rug, even after I had taken the larger part of the vacuum off the hose and got down on the floor to vacuum with the hose. I could have left them there, but someone else might have stepped on them and felt discomfort. Someone other than me.

My laughter has changed over the years. My voice has changed, too. Not because of puberty or anything, but because of interactions with others that have taught me a thing or two about how volume, pitch, intonations, and other variables that define how your voice sounds affect the way your voiced thoughts and ideas are received by others. I remember when I took acid, the day after I had an “acid laugh.” I’ve had a jolly laugh, a loud laugh, a quite giggle. You see people and listen to people and love people and sometimes you want to imitate what you love. And then eventually, after all of the imitations are gone and you’ve found something that is you, or maybe a culmination of all of the experiments in imitation you’ve done, you’ve got a laugh that’s yours.

The great thing about improv anything is that you're job is to highlight the other other person. Great improv comedy happens when each troupe member someone makes the other troupe members funnier. You are only funny if the people around you laugh. You're only loved if the people around you support you by loving you. 

vacuuming and moving tires

I spend a lot of time alone. How that happened, I'm not quite sure. I won't say that I much prefer it, but most of the time, I much prefer it.

A long, long time ago I spent a great many hours moving a bunch of tires from one side of my house to the other. It was no small task for a number of reasons; First, tires are heavy and there were a lot of them so I had to move them one by one. Second, the path from one side of my house to the other,  to their final destination, which was next to an old in-ground swimming pool that is empty with no water in it, just a big hole where we once put an in-ground trampoline, was laden with obstacles. The route involved traveling between narrow rows of old cars, ducking beneath low-hanging branches, and walking over precariously perched slabs of concrete sidewalk that would sway and tip menacingly to one side when you stepped on them. Thirdly, the tires had to be ordered nicely, stacked on top of one another in rows, which involved hoisting the tires above my head at times. All this moving tires involved ample strategy. So it was a physically demanding task (heavy tires), mentally demanding (lots of obstacles), and spiritually demanding task (monotonous, externally unrewarding). Looking at the tires, I thought that tit would take forever and be a very tiresome, monotnous, boring task. And it’s funny, it started off that way. But hours in, I realized that I loved it. For some reason, I grew to love moving those tires, making the long trip from one side of the porch to the other side of the yard, through cars, under trees, over wobbly sidewalks. Hours in, I wanted to do nothing else but move tires forever. 

Yesterday, I vacuumed up the remaining needles that had fallen off my Christmas tree when we chopped it up and took it outside after the holiday season had passed. There were so many needles. They would stick in my feet when I walked over them so I had to wear shoes when I vacuumed. They were also stuck in the rug. My carpet is  made of little curls of fabric, matted down over the years by feet and furniture, so it is easy for needles to get stuck deep in its curls. There are also two carpets in my living room where the needles fell. One is old and brown. The other is rainbow colored with rectangles that gradually spirial in, getting gradually smaller and smaller until they envelope a single pink line in the middle. Actually, admittedly, I thought that the carpet was made a rectangles that gradually got smaller in diameter, but upon closer inspection, I see that this description is wrong. The carpet is actually made up of lines of varying colors, widths, textures, and lengths, some of which run into one another. So it spirals in, but not in any immediately discernable pattern.
        It’s funny the perspective you have when you spend a lot of time looking down, upside down, lying down. Those with lack of confidence have a good perspective on things below. They can tell you a thing or two about carpets and floors.
      Anyway, the same thing happened when I was vaccuuming up the needles. The vaccuum didnt work well so I had to get down on my hands and knees and work that way. There were so many needles and I had to go over the same spot multiple times. And eventually, the same thing happened here as happened with the tires; hours in, I realized that I was in love with this activity. For some reason, I grew to love moving vacuuming those needles, making sure each one was cleaned meticulously, going over the same spot multiple times. Hours in, I wanted to do nothing else but vacuum needles forever.

Total immersion in something. This is what makes me happy and I miss it dearly when it is not there.

luck and lovers

There is no such thing as luck. It is simply a product of gratitude expressed; of gratitude made known.  Sadly, to live of life devoted to random acts of kindness is to live anonymously and which is more conducive to happiness; anonymity or notoriety? To be known and reminded of your deeds, to be renowned, to be made a legend or a tall tail is to be remembered. To live anonymously, committing oneself to kindness left untold, to deeds of generosity of which you go unrecognized is to be forgotten. Good luck is a product of gratitude expressed because our desire to be remembered is reciprocal and we know it. To be remembered is often a byproduct of our serving in the act of ensuring the remembrance of others. The lucky ones are not necessarily the most grateful, but  the ones who express their appreciation whether or not it is genuine. Of course purity is often not ephemeral and because a genuine is so rare and imitation or ulterior motives so pervasive, the golden ones often stand out. Life, though, is not necessarily about constant happiness. In fact, the way I see it, life is necessarily lonely and sad and people are not at all whole. We are fragments of our former selves they say and products of imitations. We are young and stupid and vain and grow older and wiser only to realize that all that we have accumulated weighs heavily. Life is necessarily lonely; it is our unfortunate fortune. Because when we live a live of notoriety then we have necessarily gained some of it by way of disingenuine expressions of gratitude. And if we live a life of anonymity then we live a life in which we are forgotten. And both of these lives are a tradeoff for one another. In either one, we are left fragmented, unwhole, constantly wondering whether it is better to be recognized or to express gratitude unfelt or if it is better to live as a hobbit and be nice, yet keep to oneself, expressing gratitude where we see fit and not because we are hoping that it will lead to good luck.

 

I read in an Oscar Wilde book once "sometimes I feel as if my life were a summation of all of the love affairs that I have had." Each one being so different, filling us up with a part of ourselves that we convince ourself is missing, whether it be reason or faith or money or kinship. Our love affairs make us whole and we are necessarly unwhole, but in different ways throughout the course of our lives. To stick with one lover throughout ones life is to commit to remaining the same yourself and convincing yourself that this lover is the best possible option for completing your circle. truth is tricky business. They say that honesty is about staying true to your "word," your "self," your "other." But your words, selves, and others are fleeting. The self I was and the half of myself that needed completing is not the same as the one I am today. I need completing in a different way today. My needs having been met by this lover and that, I move on and on. Does it ever end? Is truth so simple as to stay true to your word? To stay committed? Or is this not, in fact, the most dishonest thing that one can do?  Is this not to live the truest lie of all?

the last cigarette loomed before me like a painted smokestack in an industrial town during winter. cold and icy were the rooftops where dancing mice yielded umbrellas and swung from chimney to chimney. It was summer and down below flowers sang in the brees and bees relaxed and relapsed on hammocks made of wheat and stitched together with the webs of a thousand meddling spiders. It may seem odd, snow and dancing mice in winter up high while flowers and bees swayed in the breeze down low, but such was the miniature world of the future, shrunken down by a hundred powerfull pens and movie lenses, made real by a million minds of the scientific sort. The technologists had made fiction real and the roboticists had made love to the dozenalists and reprogrammed a master race with base-12 that spoke only in C-. They were the best of times and they were the worst of times, but much more of the latter, all things considered saving for relativity.