Choose Love.

“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.” - Mother Teresa

A new year.  A very new chapter in my life.  A new verve for life and artistry, the blog must live again.  I've lots to say, and hope, dear reader...or perhaps, new reader, my reflections and words may offer something to your life and heart.

Even the coffee shows me love here in NYC | Cafe Grumpy, Chelsea

I live in New York City now, and in New York, the stark contrasts that exist on the spectrum of humanity are present and inescapable.  Lightness and darkness coincide, mix to shadows and dim glows.  So much can be witnessed in one day.  New York is a city where, should you open yourself up too far to the suffering in the world (the darkness), despair may creep it's way in to your house of personal constitution.  The beauty of this city, in contrast, and if you're open to it, is the awe-inspiring connectivity of the millions of humans (who are the light) that inhabit this tiny island.  In my last few months here, incomprehensible synchronicities have occurred, wonderfully affirming meetings transpired.  As Mother Teresa describes, it's the human spirit that prevails through darkness, and seeks other souls out in times of need.  Extraordinary, indeed.  So, for the sake of this writing alone, which is a trail of ponderings rather than dissertation on what I know to be, what if that was the meaning of life here on earth?  To weather the storms of darkness by navigating with other souls of light and passing on the gesture?  And isn't lightness merely a manifestation of great love?  And in this world of billions of people--with various occupations, hopes, dreams, needs waiting to be fulfilled, how do different individuals find their own path on this journey?  How do you?  How do I?

For me, personally, art provides some stirrings of answers to these questions.

The Guthrie Theater announced the predecessor for Artistic Director position on Tuesday.  Replacing Joe Dowling who has been at the helm for the past two decades, Joseph Haj is from a new generation of theatre makers.  Since the announcement, many of his speeches and previously written articles are resurfacing and circulating.  January of last year, Haj addressed attendees of the Under the Radar Festival, and his speech is extant on Theatre Communication Group’s website.

His speech confronts the notion of the omni-present, age old belief: theatre is a dying art form, and shakes it’s head at the nay-sayers of the world that arts in our communities do not have value.  He marvels, “I have never seen anything take so long to die [the theatre]. We can’t even come up with new reasons why the theatre is dying.”  He expounds upon his theory refuting the endangered theatrical species, “I think one of the single most radical acts a community can perform, is for 500 people, in agreement with one another, to turn off their cell phones and sit in a dark room together to listen to someone ELSE’s story.”

Haj begins to articulate why I think I am so drawn to theatre as a way of life, and addresses this question I have posed a few paragraphs above.  A theatrical event draws strangers together, illuminates someone else's story, to hold the mirror up to nature, so that this group of strangers may reflect on their own lives.  It appears to me as though a theatrical event magnifies this notion of souls of light reaching out to those in darkness, no?--but through catharsis by examining another's story.

To some, well, to most, this work is risky; fear inducing--for the maker, the performers, and the consumers, and for some creators, fear of losing is paralyzing and risk-diminishing.   Again, I bring it back to love.

"Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; When little fears grow great, great love grows there."  - Act III, sc. 2 | Hamlet

Haj, in his speech, demands of the theatre creators coveting fear: fearful of losing, fearing death, “What are we waiting for? Better times? These ARE better times. This might be as good as it ever gets. Right now. And a fear-based, scarcity mindset that invites us to hunker down, think small, share nothing with anybody, have no courage until some imagined “better day”, in fact pushes us towards the very demise that we are trying to avoid.”

His solution?  Build a forum, of sorts.  Include a diverse mass of thinkers and creators, and get to work.  Be bold, celebrate differences, ask yourself, “What do we need?  What is our community yearning for?"  That abundance doesn’t exist is a lie.  We are blockading our own brilliance by embracing fear over love.

He encourages, “Choose generosity. Choose love. Make room. There is truly such abundance.”

And abundance I have witnessed, in many shades of lightness.

In my many synchronistic occurrences in New York thus far, I have discovered a Forum of Love.

The Shakespeare Forum, a small non-profit theatre company, are mongers of love and inspiration, and gather people together over a great adoration of William Shakespeare and his words.  They produce Shakespeare plays, have remarkable educational initiatives, partnering with schools throughout the city, and offer resources for actors and performers.

The Shakespeare Forum 2015 from The Shakespeare Forum on Vimeo.

So far, I have been most affected by their work, however, through their Open Workshop they hold every Tuesday night.  This free workshop (only a suggested donation of $5 is asked) is open to any and all public--no one turned away or "auditioned" to get in--and is all about sharing work in a loving, supportive environment.  In a room of sometimes 80 people, this ensemble chooses 5 individuals each week to get up and share a monologue or scene (mostly always written by Shakespeare), and the entire room is given the platform to give feedback. 

The first time I attended, it was out of sheer curiosity…perhaps sadistic curiosity.  The premise could make for some sick and riveting reality television: New York + actors + New York Actors (auditions + so many no’s, so little yeses! + hurt + anger + ego + neuroses +  competition) x 1,000 = potential for a gauntlet style showdown of egos and outsmarting of wits surrounding The Bard.--YUCK!

The Shakespeare Forum founders.

My curiosity was proven beautifully wrong.  This group of heart-ful artists have tapped in to an enchanting phenomenon.  Their choice of name says a lot:  The Shakespeare FORUM.  Forum.  Which, defined, states “a place, a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.”  Not orated or lectured, but exchanged.  Their motto says even more:  play the love—choose love.  These factors combined make for a magical space where bold, inspiring work can happen.  I could go on about how a safe space is created, allowing actors and observers alike the freedom to play, experiment, get messy, remove armors, but I will let an anecdote speak instead.

At last week’s Forum, I witnessed a woman get up in front of the room and share her embodiment of the character Constance from King John.  I have watched her attend each week, always the care-ful observer.  Rarely she speaks, but when she does, she offers exquisitely eloquent feedback.  Her voice is deep and sonorous, always greeting others with empathy—a very heart forward person.  It is not until she stands that you realize she walks with a cane.  Last Tuesday, she stood, cane-less, in front of the room and shared her Constance* --it was clear, well-spoken, wonderfully thought through--choices made, personal connection evident.  When asked by the facilitators, "Why this speech?"  She replied, "I read this play when I wanted to die, and I fell in love with it."  When asked, "What do you want to work on?," she replied, "I am deaf.  I have not heard my own voice in 15 years, and I want to make sure I am clear in my speaking."

The air in the room shifted, as it does with each person who braves to work in front of the crowd there.  I watched the room embrace her, energetically, and offer loving and constructive feedback with care and patience—I watched a group of strangers literally rise up to meet another person in their pain, and longing, and loss, and hope--encouraging her to feel safe enough to be heard, clearly or otherwise.  Then I watched her nobly take in the room's gracious exchange.  I swear I watched her love herself, embrace herself fully (perhaps for the first time in a long time…maybe ever?), for through the eyes of the individuals in the room, she saw the brilliance of her own heart and spirit.  She began the monologue again, and rode astride the words, letting her and Constance merge, their roots entwine.  When complete, she was speechless.  “I’ve gone over this piece so many times.  On subway platforms, down the street, in bodegas…people have really thought I was crazy.  I know it!  I’ve never forgotten the words, but for a moment I did there.” 

“That’s ok,” cried a facilitator of the workshop, “you’re breaking old patterns you’d formed around the piece…something is happening.  How did that feel?”

She paused, and with her heart wide open, a slight smile on her face, she said, “I think I heard my own voice.”

And who says the arts don’t have value?  Who says words can’t empower?  Who says a soul’s energetic determination cannot alter a physical determination?  Who says goodness and light does not prevail over badness and dark?

I defy that hypothetical "Who" with all of what I have witnessed, and laid to my heart above, and more.

Perhaps you are already seeing the parallels between my juxtaposition of The Shakespeare Forum and Joseph Haj’s mission statements.  There’s something to it, though, right?

The greatest confluence:  love.  I was recently reminded by a very wise person, “Love never fails, love never fails, love never fails.”

One last profoundly impactful creative experience I have recently drawn toward me in my journey, and then I will conclude to let you ponder on the ways of the heart for yourself.

The playwright, Charles Mee (Chuck Mee), in 2000, wrote a play called Big Love.  Wildly theatrical in scope, humorous, profound, the play explores, in a succinct and linear narrative, the nuances of BIG, BIG love.  All kinds of love.  I saw a newly staged production last Wednesday at The Signature Theatre.  Sitting front row, having taken an unrestrained journey with the performers telling his story, and absorbed a very action packed climax, he zeroes in (and Tina Landau so wonderfully highlighted in her direction of this moment) on the power of love:

"And, if we cannot embrace another?  What hope do we have of life?  

Forward Movement - Onward 2013

Happy New Year!

After a quarter century of watching the ball drop, waiting for all to exclaim Happy New Year, and looking for someone to kiss at midnight, I must say there is something still mysterious about the pivotal moment of midnight on the last day of the old year, and the first day of the new year.

As a society, we impress a lot upon that moment. And, truthfully, life continues on usually the exact same. There is a usual communal agreement to say good bye to the time behind, and embrace a clean slate of a year ahead with resolutions, goals, and projects to look forward to.

This new year, however, for me, brings a real sense of great change. And hope.

Only days before the new year, I read a book that I think has changed my life. Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven is a man's personal account of his experience contracting an extremely rare case of meningitis, going in to a coma, having a near death experience--literally taking him to 'the other side' so to speak--to heaven, some might say, and living to tell his story.

His encounter is exhilarating, inspiring and moving.

It was a wonderful reminder, and I say reminder, because I feel at some deep, perhaps subconscious level, I know all this to be true--that love presides over everything, and that this life is merely an instructional tool to help us reach heights in the next realm.

For clarity's sake, Dr. Alexander refers to the supreme heavenly being in his retelling as Om. Some might call that God, Atman...

He writes,

"Through the Orb, Om told me that there is not one universe, but many--in fact, more than I could conceive--but that love lay at the center of them all. Evil was present in all the other universes as well, but only in the tiniest trace amounts. Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growth--no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be. Horrible and all-powerful as evil sometimes seemed to be in a world like ours, in the larger picture love was overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant."

His story continues on, and expands to include beautiful and inexplicable experiences, which he then brings back to his existence here on this earthly plane, and tries his best to both parse out that experience, and then begin to meld it back together with his bodily life here on Earth.

2012 must have been the year for books that change my life, for earlier in 2012, I read Eva Le Gallienne's The Mystic in the Theatre.  The book is an extremely moving homage to the great turn of the century Italian actress Eleanora Duse.  Le Gallienne idolized Duse as a young actress performing in New York City.  They corresponded mostly through letters toward the end of Duse's life and career, and had one happenstance meeting.  The book is a tribute to Duse's life and work, but more importantly to her spirit.  Le Gallienne writes of Duse:

"It was from St. Juliana of Norwich that Duse learned one of her favourite phrases--which I heard her use many times, and with which she often ended a letter or a telegram: 'Tout sera bien'--or, as Dame Juiliana put it: 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.  One day, when Duse was asking me about my school days in Paris, she mentioned the name of Fenelon, and wanted to know if I knew his work.  She told me how much she loved his simplicity and sanity--two qualities which always appealed to her strongly.  I vaguely remembered having studied excerpts from his Oeuvres Spirituelles, but they had made very little impression on me.  'You should read him again,' Duse said, 'he is good and gentle.'  It was many years before I obeyed her.  I understand now that he must have brought her much comfort.  He had a profound and compassionate knowledge of the human heart.  He never judged or condemned, though he was always honest.  He believed that each individual has the power to rehabilitate himself through faith and right-thinking.  The advice he gave to his spiritual children was challenging and bracing.  

'Go forward--always forward; go forward without stopping and without glancing back.'

 Duse would have appreciated that.

Over and over again he warns of the danger of constant self-reproach, of overscrupulous introspection.  This danger Duse understood only too well.

'You must stop being overanxious; stop continually dwelling on your past; go forward!'

And, in a famous passage, Fenelon wrote:

'All our faults have their uses.  There is nothing humble in discouragement; on the contrary, it is the sign of a vexed, despairing, cowardly ego; nothing could be worse.  If we stumble, even if we fall, our one thought should be to pick ourselves up again and continue on our path.'

...Duse believed with Fenelon that self-rehabilitation must be accomplished in private, and alone."

As I have been routing my journey of self help and rehabilitation, I have often found consolation in the words,

"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."  

Reading Eben Alexander's book only reinforced this belief for me.  If love truly prevails, if evil is present, but only to challenge our free will which in turn leads to growth, and if this growth is meant for strange and beautiful things--for us to become who we are truly meant to be: a wise person I love and know recently stated it as the mere yet ever feeling "fingertip on the hand of God," then what have I to fear?  What have I to doubt in this earth bound life and in this new year?

I understand this now on a deep, rich, cosmic level:  I--the part of me that is part of the 'I Am,' or God, or whomever or whatever you may call it,-- is absolutely whole and healthy and good.  Therefore, I must keep forward movement onward, working my way back to the entirety of the 'I Am.'

What a relief to know that if we keep moving forward, and learn from our faults, we are rewarded by moving toward something good, and whole!

I feel a rejuvenated sense of pride and duty both to myself and others to continue to walk proudly with love and compassion in my heart.  That, my friends, is what propels us forward through life.  It lifts us up and buoys others, and as I have stated before, we must love inwards first to take our love outside ourselves eventually.

I am looking forward to 2013 with more hope than I have looked forward to any other new year perhaps in my whole life.

One of my resolutions for this new year is to share my writing with people other than myself and my ever supportive boyfriend.  I leave you with this poem I penned myself.  I hope you take it to heart.

Happy New Year...

 The Part of You That Is With The Angels

The part of you that is with the angels,
Is larger than you know.

The fragments of you that fear,
are surrounded by angelic light,

The slivers of self doubt,
Are wrapped in downy wings,

The shards that harbor anger,
Are cooled and dulled by
Songs of homecoming,

The pieces of you that feel
separate,
Could not be part of a
greater or more complete
Whole.

You are not alone.
You never have been,
Nor never will.

One Acquainted With The Night

This one has been rolling around inside of me, slowly stewing in my mind and heart for some time now, and I think I've come to the beginning of an understanding about my relationship with myself as an artist at this juncture of my life.

My father is an artist--A painter and a former theatre artist.  The year I was born, he started a children's theatre in my home town, and watched it's inception and growth for ten years after that.  He tells people that he 'dragged me around in a costume trunk' until I could walk.  I have pictures of myself as a baby in one of those carry-all carriers set next to my father painting a backdrop of a set.  The theatre was my playground as a child, props and costumes my toys, and the magic of a story come to life on stage expanded my imagination from a very young age.   Some might argue artistic ability is genetic, can be passed down from generation to generation.  I agree.   More and more, I am realizing, too, not only did I, perhaps 'inheirit' some kind of artistic skill from my father.  Each day I spent with him by his side in his studio, each evening I spent watching him direct play after play, each hardship I watched him endure be that creative, financial, in business transactions, in relationships, and each triumph I celebrated by his side, I was absorbing, from a very young age, the energetic material of life as an artist.

It, perhaps, should have come as no surprise to me, then, that artistic pursuits, especially when hoping to make a living in the pursuit, is hard.  It hurts, there's no justice in the scheme of it all, and it can make you a crazy person.  It can make you want to throw in the towel.

And that is, more or less, what I have decided to do with the past couple of months of my life.  Throw in the proverbial towel--but not like I'm throwing up my white flag of defeat and giving up forever--rather, I've decided to take a breather from the rat race that is pursuing a life in the theatre.  I've come to the conclusion I need to dig deep and ask myself some important questions.  Do I want to do this right now in my life?  What was I drawn to in the first place?  Can I do something else and be happy?  What else makes me happy?  Why do I do what I do?  What do I want out of a career in the theatre?  I have begun to parce out what serves me as an artist and a person, and what have become unhealthy attachments in the pursuit.  I'm beginning to realize my desperation for wanting to pursue a living as an artist has tainted my artistry.

No one can prepare young artists for the heartache and successes, the milestones of highs and lows one will experience in a year of the "pursuit," let alone a lifetime.  No one could, certainly, prepare artists, let alone, the world, for the economic low we are experiencing.

And so, I'm left, and I'm not the only one, asking these questions...How to do it?  Why do we do what we do?  Is it worth it?  It just so happened, perhaps I needed to go back to my roots to gain some perspective.

Since making the decision to take a reprieve, I have had the great fortune to be accepted by the community that gave me the primary rearing I had as a young artist.  At the age of sixteen, I left home and attended my 11th and 12th grade years at an arts boarding school where I received two years of intensive, pre-professional actor training.  At this school, I was treated like the young artist I was at the time, not as a student.  We read Dante and Tolstoy, we related Physics to Dance, and Visual Arts to Math, we lived together as artists, we worked together as artists, and we were all given the permission to be exactly who we are.  My theatre teachers there say they were creating an ensemble; they were creating a family.  The other amazing instructors say they were giving us an education, they were giving us a concrete foundation as curious, responsible, active, and creative members of society.  We were to go out in the world, and influence society with our art.  We were to set the world on fire for the better through our art.  I have now been welcomed back in to this amazing place and community, and I help students begin the same journey I embarked upon so many years ago.  It is my job now to tell students that wish to expand their world through art that there is a place made just for them to do so.  And it is at this beautiful place where I have been reacquainted with my own creative spirit again.

I have been particularly inspired by two pieces of art that have crossed my path in the past month through my work at my school. These pieces have ignited that fire deep within me to keep my head up, and has reminded me of my worth in this world as an artist--and of all artists.

The first amazing piece of art is the documentary film, Pina - A Film for Pina Bausch, the second is a speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1963 at Amherst College to commemorate the poet, Robert Frost.  Both of these works of art are tributes by artists (I think JFK was an artist--the last of the heart high politicians, I believe) for artists. Both have reignited sparks of inspiration, great and small inside of me, and have helped me remember my responsibility as an artist to myself, my fellow artists, and the world.  Pina reaches you on the micro-level, President Kennedy's on a broader scope.  Both are haunting, uplifting, loaded, and pose a challenge to today's art and artists.

  About Pina:  Watch the film.  It is a breathtaking tribute to the late choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch.  Wim Wenders, the film maker, had been in collaboration with Pina to create a film of her work.  The project had been in the making between the two of them for 20 years, and just as it was finally going in to pre-production in 2010, Pina Bausch unexpectedly and suddenly passed.  The film is comprised of several pieces of which she choreographed and danced during her lifetime as a theatre/dance artist.  It also includes interviews with her international company members, and their own personal physical responses to her as a mentor, leader, artist, choreographer, and dancer.  It is moving, funny, poignant, relevant, challenging...It is a piece of work every artist needs to see, regardless of their interest.  The trailer asks of its viewers, "Is it dance?  Or is it life, love, freedom, struggle, longing, joy, despair, reunion, beauty, strength?"  Her work, under the guise of dance, elicits the nuances of life in, perhaps, one single gesture.  My friend, who watched the film with me, speaks of her artistry better than I ever could,

Pina Bausch, at work.

Pina's dancers all say essentially that she made them better. She made them more beautiful, more confident, and more talented. Most interesting to me was that she elicited this kind of response was by being, for the most part, silent. She made them great by quietly giving them permission to search until they found their own beauty. Pina gave her dancers questions rather than answers. One dancer recalled a time, after a terrible rehearsal, that her only comment to him was "Go on searching." 

Another dancer said that Pina taught him to stand for everything he did - every gesture, every step, every movement. She believed wholeheartedly in a person's need to be authentic and to dance - or maybe to live - with intention.

Pina choreographed using the elements - rocks, water, mountains, dirt. She allowed beauty to be there, and for her dancing to be over it, through it, beside it. She didn't force beauty into a box. 

Pina built a company-- a family of dancers built with trust and shared vocabulary and passion and love, and from there she could break open the extremes of the human experience, and often she explored those extremes to their utmost, abstract extremes.  Bausch looked at beauty from all levels, she dissected it, and reformed it as something else through her lense.  One of her dancers remarks of Pina as a dancer, "She moved as if she had a hole in her tummy, as if she’d risen from the dead.  When I am onstage today, I try to imagine Pina in her pain. But also in her strength and her loneliness.--all of her pieces were about love and pain, and beauty and sorrow and loneliness."  Kennedy says of Frost, "His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself."  All artists have been acquainted with the night, deep, dark, silent and mysterious inside of them.

As Kennedy says in his speech, "When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

Throughout the film,  Bausch's dancers remember moments they shared with Pina during her lifetime.  The director so exquisitely put them at ease and caught them at just the right moment.  The ensemble members pour forth such loving, intimate words that honor and uplift the memory of such a compassionate and innovative woman.  

One female dancer says, "Meeting with Pina was like finding a language--finally.  Before, I didn't know how to talk, and then she suddenly gave me a way to express myself.  A vocabulary. When I began, I was pretty shy, I still am.  And after many months of rehearsing she called me and said, 'You just have to get crazier.' And that was the only comment in almost 20 years."

A young male dancer says, "When I was new to Wuppertal (her company), and confused about some things, she merely said, 'Dance for love.'"  

And, boy, do we need to hear that more often in today's society.  Everyone.  Not just artists.  Don't forget to do what you do out of love. The heart, especially the artist's heart has an extremely large capacity.  Out of this great heart really springs forth every other human emotion possible.  In truth, all art is a means through which to connect our hearts, I think.  Pina was certainly one acquainted with the spectrum of human spirit and heart.  She and Frost were ones "acquainted with the night."  And they let their human experiences bleed forth, compassionately into their art for all to witness, and share and impart and enjoy.

Pina gave her company permission to crack open.  To get crazy, to move around and through obstacles, to move in abstract ways, to emotionally engage in the work and movement.  She validated their life and work as artists.  JFK gave the artists a voice amongst our nation in his speech.  "I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist," he wrote, "In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

Wim Wenders and Pina Bausch.

My artistic spirit is being re-acquainted with the high noon again.  I am searching for a healthy, fulfilling place to reside with my desire to pursue my craft--perhaps to make a living, perhaps not.  One of my favorite quotes from the great Sufi poet, Rumi, goes like this, "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."  More importantly, I am making my way back there, back home.  I'm stoking the fire in the underbelly, I am remembering--finding my rightful place--in the great web of artistry before and after me, I am claiming my purpose for who I am meant to be.

I leave you with yet another beautiful work of art.  May it break open something wrought within you, something struggling or longing to be awakened and treated gently, kindly, and sent off with a purpose.  May we all, through art, know like we know the sun will rise tomorrow, that we've much to look backward to with pride, and everything to look forward to with hope.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

                                          

-Mary Oliver

A New Season

"Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman

The days are getting shorter, the light of the day turns to that beautiful goldenrod hue at about 2 in the afternoon, and seems to hang there until it feels compelled to dusk.  Crisp leaves fall from the trees, and there's a brisk breeze that cuts through the heat of the sun or the humidity of the lingering summer.  Soon, smells of woodsmoke will fill the air, the blue mountains that surround my home will light afire with trees of scarlet, yellow, orange and earthy browns.  This is my favorite time of year.  You can almost taste Autumn in the air.  

I ring in the fall like most people ring in the new year.  I feel, with the crisp refreshing breeze of Autumn, comes a new excitement for life, a change with the season.  Each year of my life, thus far, I have felt that, and have had good reason to.

This year brings certain excitement, but unlike years past, this Autumn brings with it a desirous, almost desperate need for change.  

I'm not one to air my dirty laundry in public, as we southern ladies say, but I feel sharing my story with...well, the world...is a way of healing.  Both for myself and hopefully for others who may be going through something similar.

My whole life, I have been, I think, a healthy person.  Around this time of year, I may get the sniffles as the seasons change.  I dose up on vitamin C, fluids and rest, and in 3 days, I've knocked my cold on it's ass.  All of that oddly changed almost a year ago.  I was doing a show at the time, which was emotionally demanding--I hadn't been taking care of myself as well as I could have, physically, and before I knew it, my skin was breaking out in strange rashes, my eyes were swollen and puffy every morning, my glands began to swell, and my energy level plummeted.  Come to find out, the mono virus was rearing it's head in my system, and I haven't felt quite the same since.  Not like myself.  Most recently, I've been dealing with a head to toe outbreak of what I believe is eczema.  I never, ever wish this kind of ailment upon even my worst enemies. I was red and itchy--I've lost confidence, I've lost sleep, which in turn diminishes my appetite, makes me more irritable, motivation, passion, control has seemed to vanish, and, at times, it seems like a downward spiral of bad after bad.  

I'm not in too much physical pain, I've not been deformed, and I am certainly not dying.  But, when your physical world is shaken up, everything else seems to follow suit, and this is not something I have hereto experienced.  My usual normal routine of going about my day suddenly became 'What's wrong?' 'What's this?' 'What symptom is going to pop up today?'  I found my luck, my love, my outlook, my artistic zeal all dimming a bit under the shade of my newly found wonky outlook on myself, my health, and then the world.  The past year has been like riding a strange roller coaster ride that I am ready to get off, but can't quite find the STOP button.  Physically, emotionally, mentally--I feel sort of spent.  The mind, the body, the spirit have dualities of being one but separate: they work together in tandem to create this experience we call life, I think, but ultimately, we are not our bodies, and we are certainly not our thoughts.  I believe we are immortal souls using our bodies as a vehicle through which to gain enlightenment, to elevate our inner workings and our spirits to realize the God within us.  We can pour light and love in to one element of our earthly being (or, on the other side of the coin, pour darkness) and feel the other elements begin to radiate as well.  So, the more I look inward, the more I find myself going, "OK, life...you win.  This is an experience.  I'm learning something here.  This, perhaps, is not necessarily a bad thing."

Fall is here, and I am where I am, and I find myself trying to find myself.  In a good way.  It's as if I've jumped in a pile of leaves, and I'm uncovering the layers again.  I have still not gotten to the bottom of what my body is experiencing, nor I may never, but I've plumbed the depths of my heart and spirit a little deeper than I would have had I had a spectacular year of great health and no hard times.  

I've tried to maintain hope throughout all this.  

Most importantly, this past season, I've learned what to hold on to, and what to let go in this lifetime.  I'm re-examining what I've been told--and because I am left vulnerable by the past month's experience--I am weeding out what, truly, insults my soul and giving myself permission to throw it the f@*% away.  Fear clings, love lets go.  So I'm loving and letting go and asking:  What doesn't serve me?  Am I clinging to this belief out of love or fear?  How can I love more?  How can I see, reveal the love and God-like qualities in every person with which I come in contact?  More importantly, How can I love myself; see myself with new eyes, which, in turn, will lead me to be a better lover all around:  a better lover to myself = a better lover to others, romantically and otherwise = a better lover of life = a more joyous, calm experience in this lifetime.  

I used to find myself going, "How can I get back to before all this?"  "How can I feel like my old self?"  But, our experience here on earth is cumulative isn't it?  We are beings who can't go back in time, but only look and move forward, yet try to maintain an openness to presence.  Some might quote that beautifully bittersweet Joni Mitchell Song, "The Circle Game"

"and the seasons, they go round and round,

and the painted ponies go up and down,

we're captive on the carousel of time,

We can't return we can only look behind from where we came,

And go round and round and round in the circle game."

I get my optimism from my grandmother Pat, and I choose not to look at life as such a round about circle.  We have peaks, we have valleys.  A very wise woman I knew once said, "You know, I never anticipated the journey I've taken to get where I am.  Particularly health wise.  If I were to look at my life as a mountain climb, my path was not straight up, as I often wished it would be.  I started at the bottom, and wound my way around.  I got to the top, but it was a slow, circular journey.  I made it, though."  

I have a confession to make.  I started writing this particular post two weeks ago.  It started as something completely different.  There were days in my very recent past when I felt like I was literally having to pick myself up off of the ground, plant my feet on the earth and take one step at a time, my stride has picked up now.  Even between the time in which I began to write this post to now, my health, my energy, my mood, my outlook has taken a great shift.   I'm looking up to the top of the mountain, and down a little bit below me at where I began.  

Our bodies tell our story.  What story do you tell?  We can change our minds, we can change our bodies, we can change our stories, and we can change our lives.  

I have decided to remove this shell, this armor this hide with which I harbored anger, resentment, hate, doubt, fear, sadness.  It's time to compassionately remove that now.  It no longer serves me to be the person I was meant to be.

I am shedding an old skin.

I am ending one season, and beginning another.

Literally,

Figuratively,

I am making a concerted effort to tediously examine and re-examine all I have been told at school or church or in any book.  I am lovingly dismissing whatever insults my soul.  With this, in Mr. Whitman's words, I think my flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of my eyes and in every motion and joint of my body.  

I am beginning to love the poem of my body again.

Le Papillon - The Butterfly

'Le Papillon,' ink and paper, Pablo Picasso, 1936.

Besides being the name of a very funny looking breed of dog, Papillon means butterfly in French.

Et, voici!

I stumbled across this beautiful line drawing some time during my teenage years.  I think I was looking for a good enough reason to get a tattoo.  I've always said that if I get something permanently etched in my skin, it's got to be a masterpiece of a work done by a master.

Just so you know, I never got a 'Picasso' tattoo, nor probably never will.

Then, I liked it's clean continual line, and the freedom in the ink, done with such whimsy, it seems as if the figure might flutter off the paper.  I appreciated this beauty for the sheer aesthetic qualities, but after all these years, this image still calls to me, and I think it is because of the energetic or symbolic implications behind the image and the title: The Butterfly.

Come to think of it, the butterfly's journey has held me captive since I was of reading age.  Anyone remember this classic?  There's a wonderfully read version recorded here, probably read by a former school teacher.

In this story, the caterpillar boastfully brags to any animal around the pond who will listen "When I grow up, I am going to be something different!"  She meets a polliwog along her tour who is excited for the caterpillar's transformation.  He soon finds, though, like the caterpillar, he will also 'grow up' into something different.  He suspects since the caterpillar is turning into a butterfly, he is going to as well.  After watching the caterpillar wrap herself in the cocoon, the polliwog patiently and excitedly waits to witness his friend's metamorphosis before his own.  When the butterfly emerges from it's wrapping, the polliwog gets so excited, he jumps up and down.  Wait.  Jumps?!  Yes, the polliwog was so enthralled with the butterfly's seemingly conceited metamorphosis that he failed to witness his own.  He had become a frog!  At first, the polliwog turned frog is slightly disappointed.  He thought he was going to become a butterfly, but soon he grows to love his new embodiment. The last few pages of the book shows a new caterpillar boasting of his future change, but the frog is too busy to notice, he is admiring his own transformation in the reflection of the water.

I even remember in first grade getting a monarch butterfly kit in the mail, and watching the caterpillars wrap their cocoons and eventually hatch into beautiful butterflies.  How amazing a transformation from literally one thing to another.

So why Papillon?  Why Papillon Project?

I feel I've reached a time in my life where my physical sense of the world is being challenged through recent rising health issues, which has also forced me to see the world a bit differently from all aspects of my life, be that physical, spiritual, emotional, creatively, professionally...

In the last year, much has been accomplished by yours truly at age 25, and yet, I find myself no where near where I expected to be if someone had asked me to predict my fate a year in advanced.  When I graduated college, a few years ago, I was faced with the very blunt reality that planning will only make your brain feel better in the long run--as far as 'life stuff' goes.  It really does no good, and yet, here I am years later slightly perplexed that my life hasn't unrolled in some kind of linear fashion, right?

I am reframing, as it were, my own perception of myself.  And, as of late, that seems to be happening sometimes on a month-to-month basis.  Like the polliwog's situation in the story, sometimes I feel our society projects the butterfly's outlook on the world.  'When I grow up, I am going to be different.' -- the butterfly knew exactly what she was going to be, how she was going to get there, and the confidence and practical skills, tools, and knowledge it took to get there for herself.  And here's this little polliwog observing and excited for it's own transformation to become a butterfly, too, only to find out that not all pond dwelling transformers sprout wings like a butterfly.  In fact, he became something entirely different.

From a very small age, children now are force fed a path toward success and employment:  go to school, go to college, get job, marry, have kids, retire...let your kids rinse and repeat.  No one ever told me in school that life was entirely and almost absurdly not like the linear line toward retirement that perhaps out grandfather's had.

I wrote in my last post I am learning.  I am learning now more than ever about who I am, and who I am becoming, and who I am becoming...

I let it play like an old, beloved broken record, because aren't we all in constant motion toward becoming something slightly newer than we are now?  Haven't we all heard about the 'Chapters' of our lives?  The person you were when you were 15 versus the person you are when you are 30?  Hell!  Like I said earlier, I feel like I am swapping lenses on a month to month basis!  Like the little polliwog in the story, most of the time, pre-adulthood, we are completely unaware of the various lenses we will look at ourselves and our lives through during each of our lives here on Earth.

I am finding, too, that this reframing can be quite uncomfortable.  As human beings, I believe we are adaptable to many many things.  Unfortunately, one of the many 'limiting beliefs,' and quite frankly, lies, we are told as young humans is that change is, or has to be hard.  It really doesn't have to be, I am learning, too.  You decide how you react.  What it can be is uncomfortable, perhaps...which brings me to my next point about our lovely little Papillon:

It's an odd act--wrapping up in a silken thread, then struggling to break free--and, as that wide-eyed first grader, I recall watching the hatch and seeing the Monarchs struggle, and fearfully asking my teacher, "Is that blood?"  "No," she replied, "the butterfly's coloring drips off sometimes in this process like paint."  Something registered in a younger me, then, that that butterfly's struggle was nothing to create fear in myself about.  In fact, it was something surrounded by beauty--like paint.  I've heard that if you help a butterfly out of their cocoon when they are 'hatching,' really re-birthing themselves, you will actually kill the emerging butterfly in the process.  The struggle is necessary to come out on the other side.

I'm learning that, too.

A friend of mine synchronistically sent this to me today...

A lovely reminder that ten years from now, we may be altogether a foreign person than who we are right now.  I feel like the best way to begin to cope with such a large thought (and this is the only way I plan on seeing things, for now at least.  Note:  I could be wrong, and note: 'tis only my opinion)  But, I think a great way to begin to digest these times of reframing in our lives is to view ourselves with compassion and love.  By way of having compassion toward yourself, I think you will find the compassion contagious for others. Carry grace and love for the great changes that will occur, and hold hope in your heart that, although the path may not be a linear climb, the rough patches make you richer, and realize that good awaits.  Always ahead.

Someone I love very much consistently reminds me, "You can't stop your good, you can only slow it down."

Somehow, I think the butterflies intrinsically know and have these qualities; when they are caterpillars, and when they are butterflies.

I was reminded of all these things and more today while on a walk during my lunch break.  Mother Nature offered a lovely reminder, as Mother Nature so often does when she wants to communicate with my soul.  I stepped out of my dark office and in to the sunlight of the day, and first thing I meet:

Le Papillon.

A Blog? A Blerg!

I did it.  I started a blog.  

"Blerg!" 

As the great Tina Fey so geekily, yet truthfully, coined as Liz Lemon on NBC's 30 Rock, "Blerg" is a verbal denotation of exasperation, perhaps frustration; as Urban Dictionary puts it, Most commonly used in the same context as 'oh damn.'

 And this is how I begin my blogging journey?  Yes!  It's intimidating!  And then I say to myself, "But Prentiss, everyone is doing it..."

Yes, I am one to fall in to peer pressure from time to time.  But only from time to time:

 My upbringing was constantly reiterated with sayings like "March to the beat of your own drum," as my mother swept me out of our peace frog bumper sticker laden Volvo station wagon.  Peer pressure was something I laughed at in those D.A.R.E. classes in the 5th grade where police officers would come to talk to you about the danger of leering drug temptations.  Peer pressure was not in my vocabulary as a pre-teen, OK?  Needless to say, you never found me smoking behind the English portable in junior high before 2nd period, or going into the closet to make out with the smelly, greasy faced 14 year old boy next to me while playing Seven Minutes in Heaven at the first co-ed Halloween party I'd ever been to in my whole life.  I didn't even WANT to play Seven Minutes in Heaven!  I wanted to bob for apples and talk about plays!  (OK, I was a square.)  In 7th grade, my only falling into the peer pressure pool might have been when I bought my first pair of Chuck Taylor shoes, because "all my friends were doing it."   And, I suppose that is a sad excuse for snapping under peer pressure.  I marched to the beat of my own drum.  What can I say?

So you gave into peer pressure now, you might ask?  For a BLOG?

Yes.  To blog.

I suppose the seed of blogging peer pressure was planted several months ago, amongst the often trivial Facebook status updates.  Occasionally, I would come across a friend's blog link.  Being the Internet junkie I am, I would read it.  Literally any friend's I came across. And soon after, I would feel a sense of connection to that friend that I hadn't known before.  No matter my level of intimacy with that given friend, somehow these virtual words on a virtual page connected us, and inspired me beyond belief.  I realize it takes a huge amount of bravery to put personal words on a page and then let someone read them, let alone complex and intimate thoughts for the entire world wide web to see.

Blogging never crossed my mind until many months ago, when my so very supportive boyfriend suggested I start a blog about cooking and household experiment findings I'd been conducting.  I laughed at the notion then, and have been laughing for several months.  Yet, the lingering connection and impact my friend's blogs had on me initially, and their continual resonance as they update with more posts stuck around with a gnawing patience.

The artist in me is shifting, as we artists often do.  The perception I had of myself as an artist is changing into a new permutation.  My creative outlet has been demolished, or broken or shifted with this personal persona re frame, and so the a new outlet must rise, I think.  My perfectionist personality tends to get extremely overwhelmed by decision making, and my previously irregular lifestyle has never been condoning to ritual.  I am learning, however.  About all of these things and more.  I am learning more in my life now, than ever about who I am...and who I am becoming, and who I am becoming.  Much more on all of this soon.  But know out of this:

The muse of the blog struck me.

After my striking, of course I began thinking of trillions of ways to talk myself out of a simple endeavor such as pressing a button to type some words that people may or may not read.  I was resistant, because it was intimidating. Firstly, do I have anything to say to my friends far and wide?  Moreover, do I have anything to say to the world wide web, meaning, the world?  Is what I have to say worthy?  What background do I choose?  What font do I choose?  What do I call the blog?  Who the hell sits around and comes up with font names like Homemade Apple?

You see the vritti, the mind chatter, the monkey chatter as my dad says...the self-doubt, the anxiety, the whirlwind of question and thought has been quieted began with one step and ended with a completion of that step.  I pressed the button.  I began at the beginning.  I quelled those doubts and questions, even for a second, and began something that, I think, is going to bring a lot of solace to my life, and I hope to yours.  I started this blog, here.

As I look back at these collected paragraphs, I think, you mean all that for a blog?  And, even through this first entry, I am finding my voice and saying to myself, "Yes."  "All of that.  And it is OK.  You are allowed that.  You are worthy of that, and more."

You hear that?  I am worthy a blog, DAMN IT!  It is a small start to the awakening of something large.

Now, when I watch 30 Rock in it's last episodes, every time I hear Lemon exclaim, "Blerg!"  I'd like to think that her subtext is as long as this.  My first blog post.  Because, frankly, I think people go on this wild goose chase of doubt and discovery and self-conflict more than they let on, or perhaps even know how to begin to let on.  And, here I am, it's 1AM, I've formatted lots of templates, I deleted my first blog because I spelled Papillon wrong (more on that later), after paragraphs upon paragraphs, (thank you, kind reader, for sticking with it), I've surrendered a bit.

I can breathe a bit deeper.  Here I am.

Here I am:   Blerging...uh...Blogging.