It doesn't take much...

Click to enlarge

From 9 Chickweed Lane.

P the C

Parade the Circle was this weekend -
Here are some pix, click to enlarge...

Last minute building...



Bee Guy...



Recycled Fairy Princesses...



As always - kids on Steggie...



The Ghostly Freighter....



check out bakaitis.com for a more comprehensive display of images...

Here's a bit of video of the Finale...



To bed! I'm exhausted and sun-burned and a little drunk...

Enjoy!

acro yoga

New goal.
Don't know when.
Don't know how.
But it's beautiful.

She called me a dancer

I totally needed my dance class tonight. I was full of the nervous energy that come from things unresolved and needed to focus my thoughts on something minute, technical and subtle.

We've started repeating combinations, letting me think more about the details you can never consider when learning a new movement: where my spine is, how my foot completes the line and which muscles to engage to keep my balance in tilts and turns.

I love when you can get to point where the end of one movement is the beginning of another, there's a flow there that only comes from a solid understanding of your body in three dimensions.

As I was leaving, I got a complement that may change the way I think about my body - she was relating a conversation she had that referred to me, "I know this dancer..."
Me - a dancer.
And tonight, I was.
I attacked the movements and anchored my center. I was quick and precise and consistent.
I wasn't playing at dance, I was dancing.

So yeah, I'm a dancer.

Trying something new

For years I had jobs that were physical. Despite my own misgivings about my body's aesthetic, I always knew I could count on my muscles and bones to lift, hold and balance me. It was distinct sense of truly inhabiting my physical self. And, now, in my office job, it's a sense I miss.

I've come to believe that a disconnect from the body is a disconnect from something deeper and I've come to the conclusion that I will now decidedly inhabit my own skin.

For years I've had fantasies of being a dancer: ballet, jazz, modern... maybe a gymnast? The grace and solid carriage of being they have has always awed me, and I need to stop daydreaming and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Around mid-December, I received an email blast from a local modern dance studio for a show at CPT, the concept resonated with me, as did the fact that they are located in my neighborhood and have a beginners' class on Monday nights.

So tonight, I arrived with a bottle of water, a good deal of resolve and oodles of trepidation. Luckily, it was a small class: me, the teacher, and a dancer in town for the show. It was moderately difficult, with the alignment of the body proving most challenging. By the end I was remembering... is it "combinations" in modern dance?

I walked home on this unseasonably warm evening, thinking about how my back stays tall when I walk, how to align my feet to hips, and my hips to my shoulders.

I had this thought about 4 years ago that I would be my most healthy and most athletic in my 40s, and here I am, 31, and a modern dance class has begun to break down the 4-year silent estrangement between my mind and my body. Hurrah for resolve!