Chapter 115
Today, after a night of restless tossing and turning, hot and cold, wakeful and dog-tired contrasts, I was up and out before dawn had even thought about it.
Curled semi-foetal (I still can’t get used to the American spelling, too close to fecal for my liking) in the passenger seat of a car, I chanted soundlessly in Sanskrit for much of the journey. Either Sanskrit or Pali, another ancient language of Thailand and Asia, seem to be my only reliable meditation practices that can convert my cluster-f of acid-tripping mental chimps (not for me a single monkey) to a semblance of serenity. I enjoy the rhythm of the words, the chants that have been mine for decades now, the words that lose their conscious meaning as I liberate myself by not grasping for that meaning. I can recall and translate when needed, much as I can itemize muscles and trigger points and chains of tension in the body if a truly analytical client demands it… but the consequent loosening of ties to fundamental connection means I generally avoid this path.
My travels; global, local, external, internal, all gravitate to the seamless subconsciousness of elemental experience rather than analytical categorization. That might seem strange since I spend a lot of time pouring forth words of description, but these moments are my moments of communing with others, with you. My word pictures are ripe, luscious, dripping with condensed emotions, simmering evocatively through trial and trauma. At least to me. When I read back I want to feel my hairs take a quick shimmy, fascia in my belly and back sashay in subliminal recognition. If I can’t feel it, I know for sure you won’t and the whole point is the desperate human desire for connection, to share an experience or three.
Meanwhile, back in this day, the burgeoning rise of light through dark… I keep my eyes shaded from the battering of electric light as the movement of the earth tips us ever closer to the rise of brilliance. I begin to unwind as the curving banner of deeply rich citrus sky broadens. Light behind the canvas pushes the darkness up, shades of bruised mauve and dusty rose sweep across the horizon and the harshness of the artificial fades as the magnificence of the day steadily overtakes all else.
On my return journey, moments later, behind the wheel… I am spellbound by pink mountains. Our sweeping chain of glorious Rockies, our privilege, our benediction; they are smudged and feathered here and there as the growing Chinook winds lip the peaks and tear wild plumage into zephyr phantoms in the far distance. My heart swells as it always does watching this spectacle. My gaze races from the road ahead to the vast range south to north, picking out one peak and another, the soft pastel smudge of snow lifted and drifted into the pale blue sky. It looks so gentle from here. My inner eye gazes further, walking the Athabasca Ice Field, into the toe of the glacier, I can still feel the numbing cold of the winds howling around us from the skin of the ice mass. Twenty-five years ago it was 1/4 km closer than it is now.
Back in the west of Bragg, in the windy woods of this afternoon. I walk on ‘warm’ snow that slithers in subtle shifts beneath each step. Traversing pristine meadows of wind-sculpted white where low ridges are crisped by the Chinook’s blow and the sun’s gaze, my boots break through, crumpling the landscape in untidy trails until I disappear again among the creaking trees.
Such vast journeys in a single day. Most days I brighten my heart with calls to my folks in Andalusia. My mother, approaching 78, is outrageously cheerful, exuberant in her prolonged experience of living. Enjoy every day as much as you can! she exhorts. She is riddled with happiness, brimming with enthusiasm at her art, her walks, the scenery, growing things, food, flowers, music, sunlight and wandering silvered waves dotted by cormorants along the shoreline. Oh to be like her as long as I may. This month I’m sharing one of Mum’s paintings, either a preliminary sketch or the latest completed work… wish I could share in full colour!
With gratitude and love,
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
www.kat-dancer.com
415.525.2630, ph/txt/wtsp
