outer surbarbia, the 8th ring

i woke up this morning energized and happy, for the first time in months.  was it because of the orthobionomy session w/kalpesh? the intense hour long zumba class?  the intensive tai chi? 5 tibetan rites (i had dropped them but just started again 2 days ago)?  i'll never know.  but it was nice.  continued the tour booking frenzy as well as doing the 5 tibetan rites, the 8 brocades (chi gung), the tai chi form and the new chi gung exercises kalpesh gave me yesterday.  meditating was super agitating for some reason, my whole right side was just tensing grrrrr.

made a strawberry/banana/blueberry/coconut milk/hemp milk/orange juice/coconut/sunflowerseed/vanilla smoothie.....and...........

for practice time worked on "now's the time" for jazz rep.  i still get so frustrated with that jazz stuff.  trying to be original and inventive while using interesting tones within ever shifting  weirdass scales...but i just keep plugging away, hopeing someday i will stop feeling like i'm trying to paint monet with my feet.  sigh.  Rustemul is getting better, i hear it so clearly in my head from having danced it and heard it for my whole childhood.  it is such a rush to play it.  oof!

had my fancy pants lunch (salad with arugula, cilantro, goat cheese and honey mustard dressing, grouper and roasted potatoes, dolma) then jd picked me up for our voice lesson.  our vocal teacher is a total weirdo, in a pretty awesome way.  she had us do some warm-up sirens, then octaves, and finally diphthongs---saying one vowel with the throat and a different one with the mouth.  it opens up the whole neck in a crazy way with all this wild overtones.  i sang loly paphbay for her, for feedback and of course and its the same thing; i'm all stuck up in my nasal cavity and need to draw the sound down.  crazy, its the exact same stuff that kalpesh was working on with me.  i get all anxious and all this crazy stuff just sits like a lump in my chest and neck.  he was working with me to develop the ability to move it around and eventually draw it down to my legs and feet.

as usual, jd and i have opposite but complimentary patterns and habits.  i tend to have a too-bright, nasally sound, and he's stuck stiffly staying down low.  so our homeworks are to basically to do the opposite.

post lesson i convinced jd to go to archer road hell, where all the huge box stores are.  looking for little swing dance sneakers took awhile, but in the end was successful.  then we got sucked into michael's--jd needed velcro for his cello strap, but its hard to leave michael's once your in there.  .....Wait, i think i need some tiny sparkly flowers.  and body glitter.  and striped clothespins....Then since we were already so deeply entrenched in box store hell we figured we'd just submit and go to trader joe's.  somehow we ended up searching endlessly for mochi ice cream.  Trader Joe's: 1 Humanity: 0.  But i was happy to find cheapass organic banana's to beef up my smoothie stores.  

3 in one

well hot damn.  i was just inspired to re-read the beginnings of this here wee blog, and holy canoli i was quite a dedicated little writer back in the day! if you haven't read it, i hereby humbly recommend that you take a gander over there to those 2006 entries.  quite entertaining stuff it is!

and my, my, i was so prolific and detailed. brings to light how remiss i've been in my writings for....oh, years now.

but......no longer!  i hereby silence you, o fears of solipsistic narcissism, or at least give you a fierce hushing.

i am getting closer to having a good pung in tai chi...or rather having one at all.  pung is the uprooting energy.  simple.  but to get it right requires a complex coordination of basically every part of your body--creating a nice bow in the pelvis/low back, connecting the arm into shoulder into the root into the ground, holding that frame and moving it as a whole, connected piece.  oof!  i was working with the Sifu and one of the advanced students, straining with my whole being and wanting so badly to move his damned arm....and utterly failing!  it feels good though to enlist my entire body and being in a task to fullest of my ability, and after i (arm shaking, body straining) utterly failed to move Keiren's arm all i could do was laugh.

I told Sifu that i'd be leaving in July, and plan to search for a similar dojo in Richmond.  he said that though he has gotten invites from film-heads to move to NY or california, neither one was appealing:  NY because everything is smaller than it looks in the movies, and California because everything is too far apart.

When i finally got home, after a bit of messing about i set down for my new practice routine for daily violining:  1 jazz tune, 1 old time tune, new blackfire tunes, csardas, and etudes.  i have such a short attention span that it works best if i have 7 different things to work on, the idea being that if i keep it up every day they will all get better bit-by-bit.

My Kalpesh Orthobionomy session this afternoon was good and interesting--we talked about my tendencies towards depression/anxiety and manicness--he said it was normal, that basically i need to learn how to translate all that Stuff downward to the soles of my feet, and also learn how to move it around in my body instead of letting it get stuck and immobile.  He showed me some exercises--but most importantly, said that my consciousness is operating at a muscular and emotional level that is still quite surface and i have not yet taken responsibility for/connected with the deeper stuff in my body underneath that level.

at the end, he was just dealing with the headache of the moment.  when i lay down and he held my neck very gently, i kept thinking "dont go away, dont let go of my neck"  and then "fear and loss, fear and loss, fear and loss" and then finally connected to how deeply tired of feeling alone and lonely i am.

after, i biked (w/all the damned groceries still, from pre-kalpesh visit to ward's) to zumba w/brandon, the flashdance flamer.  i was dragging but pushed myself to get that crazy full body high of explosive movement.  its such a constant struggle trying to figure out how to meet my needs.  excercise? rest? meat? raw? hydrate? meditate (well, the answer to that one is yes always!)?  socialize? hibernate?  kalpesh said i'm on the right track, i guess mostly i just need to get over the idea that any of it really matters or is of such epic importance.

While cooking and eating dinner (baked grouper, red quinoa, roasted potatoes and carrots, salad), i spoke on the phone with this woman who passed through twin oaks ages ago, now she's a journalist living in mexico city, interested in writing about twin oaks or community, possibly for this american life.  she asked me all sorts of questions and i ended up tracing back my whole path from twin oaks, cville, prisa lenta, twin oaks round II, gainesville, and everything that went down w/sky and roma.  and thinking forward, where things may go from here.  that's what brought me back to the beginnings of my blog, and to this prolific entry.

and for today, that is all.

half for you, half for me

Also, learning this song:

Andro verdan drukos nane
man pirani shukar nane
loli phabay precinava
hop hop hop
yek pash tuke, yek pash mange
hop hop hop

In the caravan there is no floor
i have no sweet lover
i will cut this red apple
half for you, half for me


....yup, pretty much sums up my life.....

just a tuesday

ach, ach, ach.

so many older men in my life advising me.  i guess i am somehow inviting it.  felt good in tai chi today to give my complete and full effort and still fail.  every tuesday and thursday morning i wake up feeling glad that i have a place to go where i will be welcomed and pushed and hopefully have my a#$ kicked as well.

today is sunny and feels like summer.  my roselle is putting out a new leaf.  there are blueberries in the freezer waiting to be a smoothie.  its a free afternoon, til my ortho session with kalpesh and zumba.

i've been really enjoying the size of gainesville, how easy it is to get everywhere i need to go and how pleasant the ride is to get there.  stayed after class today to get some more form and chatting with Sifu, i discovered that he took a year off recently to build a house.  using google and youtube.  learned every part of it--wiring, plumbing etc.

learning this song now

back at it

Entering the endzone here in gainesville--seems like a good time to restart this here bloggy.

i really enjoy the final months of a place before moving; its so easy to sink into the moment and appreciate all the little experiences in a super-tender way.

This morning was Tai Chi, i'm moving pretty fast through the form--committed to getting the whole durn thang before leaving town.  its getting easier, like learning dance moves that become increasingly familiar.

final got to some cooking time this afternoon after the famine of the last weeks.  made some grits--locally grown and all, big ole chunky things.  made it into a chive-sprinkled polenta loaf. + beans.  greens from Siembra with onions and mushrooms.

a  puttery-laundry-cleaning sort of day, welcome after the busyness of the last weeks.

went to the gym later, trying to get back into the weights and did a half zumba class with the inestimable brandon, flaming dancing queen extraordinaire.

in a bit of a slump but then aren't i always, unless i'm manically preparing for 10 things.  the weather was cooler and grey.

finished off the day with Blackfire rehearsal--we are sounding so awesome, its just another reminder of how tragically transient bands are.  wish there were a way to make it work, its so amazing to create something that is so uniformly awesome.  so so satisfying.  

Have been enjoying this :

now in cville

slogging on, since the future is the only thing ahead.  its been pretty days in virginia, crisp in the morning and evenings, pleasantly warm during the day.  sunday was lovely, stumbled upon a seeds shift and enjoyed that singular experience of doing shared rote work with people i may or may not know and the way it fosters conversation and connection.  fun to enjoy my celebrity status as x-oaker, x-woodfolker, vulgar bulgar, x-alexander houser, x-partner of sky. whole lotta cred that doesn't get me much anywhere else.  even got a little massage gig out of it!  now in cville, seeing more more more people.....trying to find new, exciting ways to talk about my life.

cleaning up the last vestiges of alexander house, angel stopping by and her sky and i having a moment of closure laughing at lun and us and this crazy thing we did how the heck did we even run this business.  driving with sky.  talks.  yeaaarning so damn hard.  that comfort home happy feeling just doesn't happen anymore.  he lives his life so big.  i want that person in my life.

the last drive to robert and thea's, hearing all the nitty gritty and feeling my guts just turnover everything breaking nothing to do no way to stop it.  nothing.  wanting so bad to hold on and knowing that and in that moment just throwing it all into the "this one's for the future" bucket.  i want this person in my life and all i can do to get there is keep walking away.  keep feeling the pain.  keep swallowing and crying.

months ago in a conversation with marta about my lack of friends in gville she asked if i really wanted friends.  and i'm getting that on some level i don't--i don't want it to work in gainesville.  i don't want to go through this whole thing again of having friends and joy and a life and then leaving it all.  much easier to just not have it.

and i'm so lucky--so lucky that sunday morning at the peak fear meltdown kathryn walked in and just let me cry.  that i get to hang out w/goofy friends and gig a wedding and eat delicious corned beef and tiramisu.   ezra saying that he noticed my rhythmic stuff and it was fun to play off, drinking pelegrinos.  nina's face and goofy smile.  sky sharing his pie while busking.  heading out on a super shmancy road bike down lazy virginia backroads, hay bales and puffy clouds.  dining on giant piles of watermelon. delicious butternut pear soup, thea and elsa asking about my life, laughing and crying and going through boxes.  flame treating me to himalayan buffet, raspberry lemon muffin for breakfast, the easeful familiarity of cville.  leaving my fiddle in trusted hands for overdue repairs.

so far, so bumpy, so smooth.  so far, so good. so far, here's to the halfway mark. 

back

Back at twin oaks after nearly a year.  stepping into the courtyard and feeling the radical shift in bio-region wash over me; these woods are soft and sweet and soothing, a welcome change from florida's actively hostile environment. yesterday, up at 3am, on the road at 5, in the air at 9, lunch at 12, james river at 3, dinner at 7, band practice at 7 30, bed at 11.....and today i feel exhausted from  day filled with more human interactions than probably the last month combined.  also buffeted by the unrelenting memories flooding over me.  data overload.

my body is working overtime trying to process it all after a years worth of hibernation.  a promising talk with sky.  yummy food.  many babies.  hugs, chats.   exhaustion exhaustion exhaustion.  confusion.  overwhelm.  delicious clean drinking water.  explanations of plumbing systems installed.  many details.  trying to explain my life in a few words. tired of smiling pleasantly.  tired.