Interlude...then practice

When I arrived today, Liz had created a beautiful wall sculpture-tree limbs, branches and tiny twigs leaning against it, lined up from tallest to smallest, with 3 fat sized limbs standing stoic like soldiers against the adjacent wall. She used a cliplight to spot the main wall of propped sticks which cast incredible shadows that were so expressive. She had also left long skeins of string and globs of tape, that earlier had been used to wrap her body with. They were discarded on the floor in random heaps. Together we unraveled and rewound the string into balls, sharing this communal act. I asked her if she would leave the branches leaning against the wall. The environment she had created, the play of light and shadow, the architecture and texture of the branches was so inviting, that I wanted to film them and play with them also. Shortly after Liz left the studio, I set up the camera and began my practice for the day.

Reading from Deborah Hay's book, My Body,the Buddhist, I read aloud an excerpt from the first chapter titled, "my body benefits in solitude", and taking the lead from her words, entered into the space and lied down on the floor to "play dead" in the corpse pose. Behind me, as backdrop, the brilliant wall of leaning shadow branches in silhouette shone. I listened attentively to my body's lead and moved with as much awareness as was momentary. Sometimes I would utter spontaneous phrases and words, that connected with what my body was doing or observing. When I picked up a tiny fluff of lint from the floor, and regarded it with interest, I spoke the words, "a strand of dna". As I lay on my back and looked at the grid of the ceiling beams I waved my arms in a gesture of invisibly stroking the ceiling and with sudden recognition the words, "caressing my friend" came out of my mouth. Eventually, the branches were disturbed by my movement, and a quizical motif developed while I placed one branch on my knee to balance, another on my shoulder, and finally several on top of my head. Strutting, squatting, stealthily moving towards and away from the camera, an odd bonnet of branches balanced on my head and shoulders felt like antlers or a Medusa's crown of snakes. My movement meditation/exploration spun on and came to its natural pause, just as the film from my tape ran out. With the clarity of synchronicities that have so often occured during these weeks of Genesis, I returned to Deborah Hay's book, opening the page, and resting my eyes on these words..."Wherever I am, the dance is." Cheryl