CHAPTER THREE
Part One
My practice is crumbling
I am meant to be letting go of creativity. Expression. Practice. Praxis.
I am earnestly following my bodymind and I am feeling that I need to let go of creativity.
Creativity hurts me.
If I am going to take care of myself I cannot possibly be creative or practice. I am convinced of this. And... I notice my practice is disappearing anyway.
My practice is crumbling.
It is a kind of relief.
At this time I cannot practice with material. Material is so much energy. I cannot practice at all. Not in the ways I have practiced before.
My practice is crumbling.
Crumbling into pieces so small.
So fine.
With sometimes lumpy crust pieces.
I keep this fine powder around me because in the past... who I am underneath... behind... inbetween... unseen in this crumbling pile is only to be known enough so I can leave them and move on and away with this dust to remake a shape that "does" things.
To take this dust and to move toward what once was.
I am not meant to stay here or dwell here.
This crumbling is a shapeless place to leave.
I only keep it so I can once again shape it into the forms it has crumbled from.
The reformation ritual of "getting better".
To make it a shape of what is expected.
The moulding back into "good" body shapes of doing and perform these shapes.
Perform wellness and its shapes of practice.
Perform "good" body forms of doing.
In the practice world I practice in.
I have lost count of how many recoveries I have gone through. How many betters. How many aways from practice and back into practice I have performed. Practice... my dedication to my practice... is a big reason why I get to my most sick. I ignore my body. My mind. My brain. My illness triggers and disability thresholds for the want and need of expression. For the want and need of paying my rent. For the want and need of "good" body self-sufficiency. Independence. Sustaining, creating, expression, shelter always exacerbates illness and sickness and disability.
As my work becomes deeper and longer the effect on my illness becomes deeper and longer. Whenever I have created my bodymind takes a last breath of big air like we are entering a burning building. Like we will be underwater for a long time. I have physical exhalations when finishing something. My bodymind gasps for air. Because I have been holding it down in a breathless space so I could make. I don't feel this is just an experience only I am having. It is an experience of productivist culture. We separate the body and mind. Because we are often pushing past or ignoring or reappropriating our body to the will of the mind or pushing past or ignoring or reappropriating our minds to the will of the body and the brain.
I am tired of my will.
My newly centred invisible bodymind no longer consents to this anymore.
It is scared of me practicing.
I am scared of practice.
I am scared of my creativity.
Scared of creating.
The ways of doing as I have always done are not good for me.
My invisible bodymind doesn't trust practice.
My invisible bodymind is scared of practice.
It is inconceivable to me that I could ever practice and not collapse under the weight of practicing. From my bed this seems impossible. From my experience of creativity in the world... this seems impossible.
And... I am meant to be letting go of creativity.
Meant to be letting go.
But creativity won't let go of me.
Creativity won't leave.
I am trying to only focus on my bodymind. But creativity raises and collapses. Rallies and collapses again. In each collapse there is something given. Questions. Desires. Requests. It is slippery and sloppy and is tugging on my blanket. Snuggling on my pillow corner. Whispering in my resting ear.
A paradoxical parallel desire begins to repeat in me every day.
"I want to create... but... I want to take care of myself."
I want to create but I want to take care of myself.
I want to create but I want to take care of myself.
And these two desires become an everyday place of bodymind tension for me.
I have never had these as competing desires. There was only one, "I want to create". I want to express myself. I want to be free and moving and out of breath exploring and running myself into the ground doing and changing through finding, learning, making new.
New of me and in me and from me.
But those ways have dissolved and I don't want them again.
What can I do with the dust of what is gone?
When do you know for sure if part of you is past?
How can you tell if a part of you is still living or just thinks it is living?
And if it isn't living... then using it to create and make is more resurrection than expression.
And so much energy goes into blowing air and chest compressions and so much energy goes into making it not seem like a resurrection but instead deep creation.
I want to create but I want to take care of myself.
I want to create but I want to take care of myself.
I want to create but I want to take care of myself.
I watch a documentary about women and sound. The sensual nature of sound: 4 composers (1993). In the middle of the final interview with one of the four composers, Pauline Oliveros, a loud siren suddenly wails. She stops talking and listens for a long time. Quietly smiling. As the siren fades she holds up her finger motioning to somebody off camera not to talk yet and she continues listening. She finally speaks, "You have to come to some kind of agreement with yourself whether you are still hearing the sound or you're imagining the sound at the end of it." The listening for this end is an act of practice. It is an act of ritual. It is an act of pleasure. She asks, "Where does it in fact end?"
This thought sits with me in my middle. Can you hear the end of a sound... the beginning of silence? And I think of it in terms of materiality and immateriality and visibility and invisibility. Where does one end and another begin? Where does one end and another begin for me? How big is the space of where a sound is a sound and also not a sound? Can I explore this idea from the other end? Not from the siren, but from the silence. When does immateriality end? When does invisibility end? Staying with this surfaces for me that I have been staying in the wrong spaces of practice. I have been in the stops and the can'ts. Staying in the sound. Trying to hold onto the last place of sound my practice once made and to try and make from here. From a memory of "good" practice. I haven't gone into the silence. Into the invisibility. Into the everyday unseens of practice. Into the truth. No resurrections. No ignoring. No material. No leaving my bed. Staying with the safe places. Centering my invisible bodymind. Noticing... soft attuning to... staying with. Can you hear the end of a sound, the beginning of silence?
Can I create and not hurt myself?
What do I consent to?
What do I want?
I want to give myself care and I want to create.
I want to give myself care and I want to create.
I want to give myself care and I want to create.
Illness, disability and creativity share my invisible bodymind.
I want to offer the bodymind ground that is not going to take anything from it in the space of expression.
I want to harness a safe place.
I have a safe place.
I bring practice into the middle with me.