Everything Is Movement

I've been dancing. Wednesday nights. Release. I am woman. Slant of your hip curve of your thigh. Move as you want to need to feel to. In and out. Forwards, fro. It's sensual, not sexual. Shift heart over breast, breast over thigh, circle and tilt, rhythm in soul.

This is my therapy. The movement of hip and heart.





I wrote the following over a year ago. And, as our dance instructor mused "everything... everything is movement" I returned to those senior year final writing thoughts.


I was born from movement into movement. Created by two bodies in their motions of love I have continued moving ever since, first from my mother’s womb into awaiting arms and then on to my own waddling feet that have at times both stumbled and danced.
As I lay down on brown paper to have my body drawn I simply moved as felt natural and, when I once again stood on my feet, I could not have seen a more accurate depiction: a blue body in movement, dancing. Dancing forward. The figure’s movements were fluid, directed yet unrehearsed as if they were called by something unapparent to the seeing eye. And as my pastel-holding hand met paper, I began to realize the source from which they came.
Within a few strokes my blue body map was alive, bursting vibrantly. What had once been a hollow outline began to resemble a being as the chest was textured and filled.
I am a soul: a soul within a body. I am a soul that loves the crevasses of the home in which she resides, the curves and bends and fluidity of her feminine exterior, so much so at times that it is not my soul that directs my moments but my body that anticipates my soul’s desires. At times it is as if I am watching myself move, simply giving my body to the rhythm with the knowledge that its dance flows from a place over which my mind has no control.
This is, of course, impossible to depict with crayon or marker or word. We do not see souls but feel them. And while my body map portrayed one dimension of my being, a complex mind of lines and colors connected to limbs and a swelling heart, moving with ease between the contrasting shades of her background, it only begins to depict the self-discovery of my twenty-one years. There was movement and spirit within the body’s borders but no sense of the peace and desire that concurrently swell within my being.
I am a restless soul, full of both physical and spiritual longing. A colorful soul, with shades erupting from my chest and radiating outward, radiating inward, burning through each limb whenever caressed by feeling, thought, or sound. A peaceful soul, balanced between movement and calm. My body map does not tell this story, does not describe how my life has been defined by my soul’s movement, by its growth and its failings and its call—which has led me wandering under West African skies, across the Sahara and back home to Saskatchewan’s rolling prairies and my mother’s embrace, only to call me across the blue water once more.

And the monster comes a knockin'

I crave freedom. I ache for it. Like an addict, it blurs the edges of my day. This need, this next fix. You can't starve it off. This hungry monster, it's always back for me. For more.

I crave freedom the way people crave love, money, war. Power. My soul craves air. Beach fronts, train platforms, village prayers. Anything to appease the monster's lurking groans. My soul wants to see it, meet it, love it, love what's next, burst in the crashing moments of beauty and pain and revere.

I'm surrounded by leather and animal print. A soy chai tea latte. A job offer. An empty rent free apartment. A half finished bottle of red wine. Car, city happenings, lights and leather. Everything everyone dreams of.

And yet Regina Spilker spins through my ears and stirs. And the edges of my day blur. This restless need. This ache for openness. For sky and movement and ocean's sprawl. My dearest monster's call.

It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song.

"But you just got back" they say.

Got back?
Darling, I am forever going.

REVELATION

So my emotions did a 180 today and I owe it all to Eat Pray Love.

I was thinking about how she picks up and goes. And how I want that. How I love that. How I crave that. How I am restless and despite the fact that I am trying hard (REALLY REALLY ACTIVELY TRYING) I am still restless.

And then I came across this quote.

"Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby--I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to -- I just don't care."

I realized that I don't need to pick up and move to *insert anywhere but North America* to see if I can find happiness. I already know that if I do I will find totally unencumbered joy there. Anywhere the plane should land. The type of ecstasy that makes you feel like your heart is too big for your body. I know that it resides there. It's easy for me. Your skin prickles with anticipation. On long train-rides to no-where, in run-down hostels with just a little latch to close the door. In the fumbling of foreign living. That feeling... it's the type of contentment that people write books after and others pay millions of dollars and days to find.

Hand me dysentery and discomfort. I don't care. It's mine and I love it. Hand me that colicky impossible baby. It's mine.

That's not the hard part. This is. Finding happiness here. Finding contentment in a place that brings me comfort but doesn't spark my skin to fire.

And that was all I needed. The identification of a new challenge.

So I made a happy list with a soy chai tea latte in hand. And then I decided to put my big girl panties on and own it.

Heartsnaps

I have this picture... I find it captivating. Perhaps because I can’t quite pinpoint the essence of its beauty. Is it the memory contained within its four corners, the accents of yellow and brown and hope? Is it in the blue balloon on the edge that turns you to look downward from the sky? Or is it the thousands of footprints in the sand that surrounded his unmoved waiting feet?

Whatever the reason for its charm, I have grown a profound love for it. It was not by my hands or eyes, but for some reason I feel as though a part of its beauty is mine.