003. completing, changing form (to BenS)

dear Ben,

I feel half-embodied.

I enter this work through chakras 1, 2, 6, and 7 -- base of spine, pelvis, third-eye, and crown. My central three are almost missing -- stomach, heart, voice.

I need my stomach, heart, and voice.

This bootcamp completes next week. I feel I have worked out with only my right side for two months. My left side did not get exercised. It will not, until the form changes. I will change the form next bootcamp.

Radmila brought Saint Andre's cheese. A strong brie the colour of butter, with warm French bread and fresh peaches, which we ate on white-iron tables behind the cafeteria.

In bootcamp, we are making a painting 20 feet long and 4 feet wide, all of us painting on it together. It will go through 5 versions. We used up all my paint, bought more.

There is a point when a phase of work completes. Whether I am done or not, I feel a small click in my chest, saying "That's finished." I ignored the theatre click for more than a year, but it was finished that whole time. "This is my last bootcamp," it said today. Click.

I need a new form, or to extend this one. Something is completing beautifully. Many somethings.

Tomorrow I am going to Snoqualmie Falls. I'll hike down to the water, walk on the rocks, & get my first massage. The massage is the heart of the sun -- the door I never go through which is the only door remaining.

My body is the door remaining. Pulling blackberries and washing windows. I left my house where I left my self.

The hot sweet cup of tea made at home, barefoot on wood floors, in forest silence, restores me.

At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, there were only so many hours a day I could practice piano, before piano thinned out and I needed to walk, to eat, to sleep, to swim, to go hear McCoy Tyner play, to talk. After a year, I left the Conservatory completely, walked into the Oberlin Dance Company, and stayed for 2 years.

I wonder what it is, that is completing.

On the round table in my office sit a broad-leafed plant; 3 bamboo stalks in an earthen vase with shiny dark green dragonflies; a Polish bowl of tangerines, peaches, apples, and oranges; my Tibetan mala; a tablet; a color printout of our painting; and a bag with crackers, ham, & cheese.

rachel