Thursday, December 30, 2021

New Year Intentions 2021 Into 2022

Like usual, the full extent (however abridged it ended up!) of this process is kept to the confines of my journal. With Niko having entered our lives a month ago tomorrow, I am just glad I was able to get any sort of 'process' for this together! It is in the spirit of this that I actually landed on my centering idea for 2022 . . .

REIMAGINING

Reconfiguring (was a little too mechanical)

Reinventing (sounded like more 'trouble' than I think this will be)

Rediscovering (felt closer)

But 'reimagining' . . . this guiding concept has just the right tonality and timbre. 'Re' suggests a having done already of sorts, an amount of experience, a knowing. 'Imagine'/ 'Imagining' implies the WONDER of last year's centering concept, with my values of curiosity and creativity, as well as an intentionality/ sense of consciousness (a centering belief of mine) - when you 'imagine,' you are choosing, you are going out of your way to consider something, to bring it to life in your mind.


(imagine . . . )


(reimagine . . . )

In 2022, I will continue to do what I've been doing here at the end of 2021 with the arrival of Niko: I will continue to reimagine how my life works, what wonder can be squeezed from the everyday, what I will discover, how I will feel, what I will notice . . . having Niko in our lives is allowing me to reimagine what I've already experienced and what I know. I'm so excited to keep reimagining my everyday with him, and to see how this shift will create shifts in how I see other parts of my life - my work, my family and friends, my interests . . . REIMAGINING. 


Along with this guiding idea, I've revisited last year's New Years Intentions alongside the way I think of my values and such, and offer the following to myself as continued riffing:


BELIEFS: Consciousness + Love + Wonder + Vitality + Purpose =

VALUES: Simplicity | Kindness | Curiosity | Creativity | Growth


And that's where this abridged version of new year reflection ends . . . off to reimagine :)

Monday, November 15, 2021

Wonders

This morning, I found the heavy drizzle of snow on top of recently-fallen, colorful leaves alongside the many still on the trees FULL of WONDER.

The sights in my neighborhood - the same one I see every day - were BREATHTAKING to me. I started trying to pinpoint how I'd describe this practice of noticing this wonder, this 'magic in the mundane.' That's not the way - 'mundane' seems far too dismissive. I thought 'everyday wonders.' Also not right - I don't notice sights like this every day, nor do they happen every day. They don't necessarily even happen each Fall into Winter! What about 'small wonders'? That also doesn't seem right: the main sources of my wonder - snow and trees - are arguably HUGE! Not only in stature, but in affect on the world around them.

Perhaps it's not so important to be able to label this warm, tingly phenomenon I experienced once again this morning, out in the crispness of seasonal transition from Minnesota Fall to Winter. Maybe it's more important that I consciously appreciate that it happened.

WONDER.



This writing felt complete, and then I felt the push to add a bit here about another source of wonder, floating quietly (at least right now!) in my abdomen: the human I am growing there. WHAT?! It's still just totally unbelievable to me that this is 1) possible, and 2) that I am doing it right now. I have logically understood for quite while now how pregnancy works, but experiencing it myself puts the idea on a whole new plane.

I've read and had people tell me to be sure to enjoy it, and I'm glad to have come across this advice: as much has it's been physically and mentally challenging in specific ways for me, it is QUITE the WONDER, and I want to be sure I give it's due in this way, before this source of wonder has given way to another.

WONDER.

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Not "Ready," But Capable

 We spent most of yesterday painting the basement, and patching and painting blemishes to the walls throughout the house. I suppose this is part of what lots of folks refer to as 'nesting,' or prepping your space for comfort in the arrival of your tiny human. As neither one of us would consider ourselves 'handy' by any stretch (we have other abilities :)), we were thrilled to have my mom there to help. Everything took longer than expected, as it seems to with house-y things, but we ended up really proud of what we did and what we had learned.

Until we noticed that we'd left one patched spot unpainted. All the supplies had been put away and we were wrapping up to finally eat something. I was SO disappointed at first that we could have missed something. The job was incomplete, we'd failed, why had we even bothered doing the rest?! Fortunately, Kris pretty quickly reframed the situation, got laughing a bit and said something to the affect of "We're likely to ding the walls in this area on the next project too, so maybe we've just saved ourselves some time! We'll fix it when the time is right."

While those words were comforting at the time, this morning, as I've thought about this little moment, they've become poignant. Something larger than they were in that moment. They spoke to the idea that while we may not be 'perfect' at something or really 'ready' to jump in when the time comes to try something, we ARE capable.

So we missed a spot. That doesn't negate everything else we did yesterday. 

We also spot-painted the wrong color in several places throughout the house before we realized we'd picked the wrong paint. I was again pretty frustrated and disappointed in myself at first, and you know what we did? We let those spots dry, figured out the paint puzzle, and repainted them. 

Sometimes we are not 'ready,' but we ARE capable.

People have been asking me a lot lately "Are you ready?," meaning are you ready for the kiddo to come. For a long time, I haven't really known what to say. No one wants to hear you say "No!," but that has often felt much closer to the truth than saying yes. For a long time, that worried me, and had me thinking that I won't be able to handle this parenting thing. Not a good feeling when you are entering your last month of pregnancy.

That said, I'm not sure what ignited my shift in thought, but I've been steadily moving toward a different way of thinking, a shift, a reframing that feels really true and good to embrace and share: "I may not feel 'ready,' but I do feel capable." As a sidenote, I feel even more able when I phrase this idea as "WE are capable" - Kris being a crucial part of this equation is everything.

I am capable. I have proven that to myself time and time again. I have met my own challenges and come out on the other side of them with new knowledge, experience, trust and confidence in self, joy. Just as I have been capable of moving through other aspects of my life (creating and sharing new art, losing loved ones, the list the list the list . . . ), I have been capable in pregnancy and I WILL be capable as a mother and parent. When I worry about the fact that I have very little experience changing diapers, for example, remembering this mantra that I am 'Not ready, but capable' makes me feel SO much better about what is to come so soon.

(photo by Bill Cameron, from 11/3/21 Rhythmically Speaking show at Amsterdam Bar & Hall)

When kiddo comes, we will surely have infant + parent versions of missing a spot of paint on the wall or spot-painting the wrong color here and there. If When that happens, we will paint that spot when the time is right, and let the other spots dry and repaint them the proper color when we can.

Not 'Ready,' But Capable :)

Friday, June 25, 2021

Deciphering

Back this morning to creating as a state of mind, a need.

It felt really good for choreography to start falling effortlessly out of my body on my walk this morning, a tune humming in my head and being sung to life in my body as I laid out steps while shuffling down the road back toward home. Class choreography often happens this way - teased out while on a walkabout. Sometimes I think this is a measure of time constraint, but today I'm leaning into the idea that there's an amount of naturalness in progressing from walking to dancing.

What I created on my walkabout this morning, movement to the ABAC head of beloved jazz standard "Summertime," really seems to highlight how my modern and contemporary training and interest deeply inform my jazz. From elongated, reaching lines to suspended rhythms (at least in this case), these sensibilities often show themselves in what falls out of me/ what I make/ how I create. I found myself pondering how this type of movement I make juxtaposes with the type of classes I keep thinking I want to take and the combination videos to which I am drawn on social media.

The movement of the later often features fast paces, sharp hits and really pronounced, curved isolations. I LOVE all of these things, and they are often found in my work too, they just come out so different for me, and I chalk that up to what the music asks for. I am really attracted to creating/ making to jazz and jazz-adjacent music. I am not really attracted to creating/ making to pop and hip-hop music, but I AM attracted to dancing to it/ learning choreography set to it that is created by others. 

While I've long known this, I'm not sure I've put it in writing before, and I'm finding it really helpful in allowing myself the space to embrace this. I find training in hip-hop and adjacent styles really rewarding and informative, but doubt what I create will ever reflect those idioms. And that's ok! I think it's really useful to define why you have what you do in your life, and this is an example of just that.

The thoughts rumbling around my head this morning seem to share the thread of deciphering . . . I suppose this is always true of what ends up in this space; me trying to sort through and make sense of my inner workings. None the less, I'm finding that connecting word 'deciphering' useful today, and now thinking of it in connection to my recent mind meanderings about what my work is going to look like in the future.

When I say 'work,' I tend to mean 'purpose,' and I have to remember that for me, purpose comes in several packages. So I suppose I'll define 'work' here as professional contribution. For my entire adult life, my professional contribution has rotated around dance, and I have fear of what that will mean in my future after bringing a human into the world. I have of course entertained this thought before, more in the context of considering aging, but none the less, the thought has returned and wants to be grappled with.

I have fear that my body won't hold up to what I ask of it. I have fear that I won't find it as interesting as I have. I have fear that if either of these things (or other similar ones) end up true, that I won't know what else I want to do. I have LOTS of interests: music, nutrition, exercise, clothing, sustainability . . . but none of them feel like they could lead to work I could realistically obtain and completely enjoy.

All of this feels indicative of my general dislike for unpredictability. I like to have a plan. I note 'unpredictability' specifically because I actually love a measure of 'spontaneity,' specifically improvising in a framework, planning to have an unplanned day . . . there is still planning in there :)  I think what doesn't sit well with me is that I can try to look down the pipeline of my life and not necessarily be able to see with complete clarity what is around the twist of the next corner/s.

Perhaps part of the problem is my analogy: life isn't so much a 'pipeline' as it is a formation of clouds, swirling, taking shape, clearing completely and beginning that process again. And again. And again, in a beautiful repetition that never quite looks the same twice. I've made this analogy before (and yes, I'm obsessed with clouds): returning to it gives me confidence that its worth consideration :)

Another deciphering this morning: embracing the process of being pregnant. I have to remind myself that I may only experience this once, and that I should relish it, dig into it, observe it, appreciate it. Like much in life, it is so easy for me to fixate on what the future results/ requirements of an action or a happening will require that it is easy to lose sight of what's happening in the moment. Always a good observation to be called back to: I know I don't want to miss out on really taking note of this experience.

I have read that folks experiencing it should keep a 'pregnancy journal': I haven't so much felt moved to note my physical state so much as my mental state during this time, which seems consistent with how I've always journaled, and interesting observation considering how much of my focus I put into relating to my body and the bodies of others. Perhaps it's worth allowing the reminder to consider that physical state in my writing to roll around in the back of my head to see if it manifests. 

Deciphering.

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

The Smell of Melt

Delicious. Nostalgic. Comforting.



So familiar. When I first notice it in a season, I KNOW there will be more snow, yet I cannot keep myself from feeling the excitement of Spring. This coming from a woman who LOVES her snow. Interesting how perspectives can shift from season to season.

What else will be defrosting this Spring. The timing is pretty serendipitous. So strange to think that declaration of global pandemic was less than a year ago, yet here I sit with a bandage on my arm from a yesterday-fresh vaccination shot. I suppose I don't have much for comparison - everything seems to move at a quicker clip the older I get (which I assume is due to a combination of collected years of life experience and acceleration of technological capabilities). Even so, a vaccine THIS SOON is . .  uncanny. Is that the word? 

.

.

.

I just looked it up. That's NOT the word.

It's . . . miraculous? 

.

Yes, it looks like one of the meanings makes this the word.

It is a bizarre juncture to be sitting at the intersection of something so unfamiliar (Covid vaccination, at the Mall of America, no less) and the smell of melt (and surely, many other things in each category I have not yet consciously realized, or am simply not going to take the time to write about here and now). The best I can do is open up my smeller and try to take it all in.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Look Up, Look Down

I realized on my morning walk today that when I look down, my mind often starts to drift toward and stick on the nitty gritty. When I look up, I can feel my head release a bit into the clouds (or lack thereof). I've never really correlated these physicalities to their mental counterparts I experience, but I'm realizing there is definitely a connection.

I take my walks to get my head into the clouds, to cultivate wonder and an appreciation of the right now. I don't take them to plan my day and worry about things I cannot change. While I cannot deny for myself the ability of walking to generate ideas - the consistent rhythmic churn can get those mental gears churning too - I do place careful emphasis upon my desire for these walks to be more about noticing what is already than generating what is to come.



Walking away from this morning, I have a good kinesthetic tip for myself to be cognizant of when my head is hunched down into it's thoughts, and when it's on the balloon string of my neck, floating up into the here and now. They both have their purpose: it's up to me to notice when one serves me better than the other.

Look up.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

I Saw Mars Last Night

At the time, I didn't know it was Mars, it was just something near the Moon, shining brighter than everything else. It caught my eye and I couldn't look away. 



I wondered if it was a star, a satellite. Kris suggested it might be a planet, a theory I didn't prescribe to until he sent me an article about it late last night that I woke up to see in my texts.

What a magical thing! Had we not been sitting outside in our chairs in the yard after our walk, waiting for Heather and Palmer to drive by after she picked him up from daycare, I doubt I would have noticed it. There we were, sitting around and agreeing how good it felt to sit around in our yard, staring up at the sky with little else to do for a couple minutes. We agreed that we should really do more of that. Easy to think, harder to do.

I'm taken by how magical it was to really not have known until this morning what it was that drew my attention last night. I just did. It was just WORTH it to sit there and stare up at it and WONDER.

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Gratitude Overwhelm

This morning, I started drifting awake thinking about all the shots we maybe 'should have taken' and didn't yesterday during my dance company Rhythmically Speaking's first-ever (and outside in MN January, mid-pandemic, 11 hour) screendance shoot. It shook me awake, starting to dream up shots I probably wouldn't have before being there, in the moment, with all the dancers and the videography team. I can't help but start post-morteming before a project is over: I just don't want to miss any chance to learn something and take note of it for an even better next time.

While I haven't seen the footage yet, I am CERTAIN it will be beautiful and more than enough to make a beautiful screendance. Knowing this does not stop me from thinking through 'woulda-shoulda-coulda's, but as long as I can keep these thought processes in the territory of 'learn from' rather than 'torture thyself,' I think they can be productive!

So how does this connect to gratitude? Pretty easily, actually. Worries about missed shots shook me awake, but very shortly after getting myself out on my morning walk - back into nature without an agenda - I started to feel the gratitude collecting within me. Looking at the trees in my neighborhood, I was shook by how incredibly fortunate we were to have such a beautiful and rare natural event - rime ice - happening on the very shoot date we'd set months head. Earlier this week, I was lamenting the forecast, thinking about how we wouldn't be able to capture a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset - many of which we've seen happen while rehearsing out at the beautiful land at which we were so fortunate (there's that word again) to practice and shoot.

I got over that lament pretty quick when realizing the trees were going to be just coated in soft yet prickly snow-ice that . . . I just can't describe the beauty of this. Wow. The best I can do for a visual right now is a screen-shot of a video I grabbed at rehearsal on Friday:


Beautiful in it's own right, but unable to capture the magic of yesterday. 

I was so absorbed in simultaneously managing my producer, director, choreographer and dancer roles that I didn't capture anything! I know Kris got some shots, but he too was balancing too many jobs - the slate, the music, keeping us on time, carrying equipment - to really get much of anything to document the ABSOLUTE SPLENDOR of nature that we were so fortunate to get to make art amidst yesterday. I really don't think anything could have. The footage we captured for the screendance will have it's own magic, just like the experience as a whole, itself, has it's own. 

So, WOW. GRATITUDE. After my heart and head could process the gratitude surrounding the nature of yesterday's art-making experience, it drifted to the people. WOW, the people. I told Kris yesterday that I'm not sure how I got lucky enough to work with such talented, kind-spirited, funny, focused, TOTALLY BRILLIANT humans. From the dancers to the film folks to my ever-adaptable, willing, supportive and capable dude Kris, trying to write this sentence of gratitude has me sitting here, alone on my couch at 9:30am on the Sunday following such a crucial, long yet quick and thick day, sobbing. Just sobbing. Soundtrack of John Prine's last release "I Remember Everything." Just sobbing. I'll remember everything. At least I'll really try to.

I'd like to think that 'how I got so lucky' - really, fortunate - to get to work with such incredible folks on the regular has something to do with the work I put into being a kind, joyful and supportive person willing to dream kinda neat art dreams :)  Whatever unique circumstances and chemistry (and ok, HARD WORK) brought yesterday together, it was quite the recipe.

My heart-swell really cannot be captured in words (or visuals!) here, but I tried, and it's helping me process it all to be able to move on to other items that are calling my name. WOW. I feel how I feel after closing a show: an overwhelming sense of gratitude, a particular and familiar feeling both striking and comforting. It's weird to experience this feeling knowing there is still so much work to do (i.e. editing, color correcting, release), but I suppose the day after show-close, there is always still quite a bit of work to do (wrapping up the budget, post-mortem meetings, etc.). All the same . . . these feelings are sure to buoy me for a while, and I'll be sure to hold them dear, preserve them and check in on them when I need them.

WOW.

Gratitude overwhelm.

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

You'll Just Have to Believe Me

This morning, the lights from the lamp posts around my house shone columns of brassy orange: they looked like citrus-tinged space ships tipped lengthwise. I'd never seen anything like it before!

At first, I was convinced the apartment complex near us must have gotten new lamp posts, as they are different from the St. Paul city fixtures throughout the neighborhood. Then, I turned around and saw that the city fixtures looked like citrus-tinged space ships tipped lengthwise too! It was then that I noticed the dense, tiny glitter hanging in the air, swishing at the slowest pace I think I have ever witnessed. I've seen snow-glittery air before, but not like this. Without better equipment and training, I knew I couldn't catch a photo that would do it justice.


Crude attempt to capture the magic . . .


You'll just have to believe me.

It must have been thanks to the fog advisories we've had as of late. I'm surprised it took me until recently, given my obsession with them, to learn that fog is just patches of really thin and wide-spread clouds! I suppose I shouldn't be TOO shocked: clouds have always been a thing of aesthetics for me. I appreciate the science of them, it's just not the source of my curiosity.

The combo of the fog-mist-slow-glitter-clouds and the way they affected the light from the neighborhood lamp posts this morning was a bit too much for me to hold in: my body had to release some water from my eyes in order for me to process everything. Wonder in real-time.

I told Kris the other day that I couldn't imagine what it would be like to grow up in a place with no snow. Shortly after, I followed that up with the guess that there are plenty of folks that couldn't imagine what it would be like to grow up without being able to see the ocean each day. All I can say is that this fog-mist-slow-glitter-clouds got my day off to the right start.

You'll just have to believe me :)