the day after

When I made the anniversary post yesterday, I’d intended to block out the comments option (but spaced out, as I was flying out the door on the way to rehearsals). I wasn’t pimping for kind words y'all...it really was just a post for me….but thank you all so very very much for sharing the warm sentiments ;-) It was a nice thing to wake up to this morning. Because as it turns out, yesterday was somewhat bizarre.

In order to explain yesterday/Friday/The Anniversary Day...I need to describe to you what happened the night before/Thursday/The Anniversary Eve.

Thursday night, after the bellydance class I co-teach, I decided to do a dress rehearsal of a little solo I'd created to mark the anniversary of the accident. My plan was to actually perform the piece on Friday (during rehearsals with Dandelion Dancetheater), but I also wanted to share it with my class and have a chance to run it through in an actual dance space.

I wouldn’t exactly call the dance a “work-in-progress.” I’m not planning on dancing it again. The dance was more of a “work-barely-worked-on,” and I was fine with that…this dance was merely a process piece that I wanted to share with friends as a way of exploring two recent feelings I’ve been having.

The emotional context for my dance solo was:
* I can’t control how you see me.
* I am a bouquet. I am my own vase.

The dance was a performed to two pieces of music. The first half of the dance piece was loosely choreographed, and was based on a dance phrase that came out of a recent improv exploration done with Dandelion. A few weeks ago, our director had us do some stream of conciousness writing about “something that we could not control.” We then created a movement phrase that represented that thing. My thing was “I cannot control how other people see me.”

For the second song of my solo, I did a complete improvisation, leaning more towards (but not completely) bellydance. As an improv, it did not have any choreography, but it DID have something that we call in our bellydance class “a private place.” During this part of the dance, I imagined that I was dancing in the woods on the side of the road where my accident happened (except there was no car or accident). There was a carpet of yellow leaves and the sunlight was coming through the tree branches. I could smell the earth, and hear the sounds of nature. And I was gathering a bouquet of flowers.

The bouquet image is pertinent because for years now, I have used the bouquet image as an analogy for my life: I have often felt like I am a big, beautiful, blooming, bouquet.
But a bouquet without a vase.
Most of my life I've searched for a vase.
And in some pretty ridiculous places, I might add.
I've even tried turning things that arent vases into vases.
Somehow I've managed to keep the bouquet looking fresh over the years...
But since my accident, my flowers have withered a bit.

I think what I'm finally figuring out is that it is my own reposnsibility to keep my flowers blooming, and in order to that, I need to be my own vase (rather than seeking containment from sources outside of myself).

Okay.
So back to how Thursday's dance became Friday's Funkiness.

So Thursday night I dance. After I dancing, I get some feedback about the piece...but the one person I really wanted to "see me" the most, to really “get it” the most, I felt... did not.
And I was okay with that at the time, and I even went to sleep feeling okay about it.
But I didn't wake up on Friday feeling okay with it.

So now, it is Friday morning, and I'm half asleep.

During my sleep, I woke FIVE TIMES because of different versions of the same exact dream…of a car or truck running me off the road.
That wasn’t a happy way to wake up.

So I try to shake that off, and that shifts to realizing I'm feeling sad because the person I wanted to “get” the dance piece, did not…and that seemed REALLY ridiculous and interesting to me given that the dance was about how “I cant control how you see me.” And THAT seemed ridiculous and interesting because I was letting that sadness wilt my flowers as a result.

So I try to shake THAT off, and get about my day....and then MyFK wakes up and tells me he doesn’t like living in our house because it isn’t clean enough....and that's why he likes going to visit at Nana and Papa's... and by the way, did I know that at his friend's house it's so clean you can eat off the floor??
*sigh*

Well, that pretty much drained the water of the vase (the one that wasnt really there anyhow).

So I try to shake THAT off so that I can make it to Dandelion rehearsal, because guess what…it IS The Anniversary, and I'm performing today for my peers.

So I dance my solo again.
This time get NO comments.
No feedback.
Not a word.
Nada.
Nothing.
(which is out of character for this group).
So beats me.


I went to bed early.
When I woke up this morning I was so glad to find that yesterday was over.
And I'm considerring tossing my calendar.
---------------

MyFK is at his dad's this weekend....and I've got a huge chunk of "me-time".
I'm on my way to the thrift store to buy a sweater to rip apart so that I can recycle the yarn and reknit it into the summer version of "something to keep my shoulders warm."
This should be highly theraputic.
I get to shop (without the guilt of spending more than $2)
I get to tear something apart (gently, but it's beautifully destructive)
I get to repurpose yarn (YAY purpose!)
and I'll get to knit (can't beat that)

Who needs therapy.