This is an Email I received this week sent to our group of performers. The beauty, openness and truth it holds brought me to tears. I hope it opens up new worlds in you as well.
"I am reminded when flying of Einstein’s general relativity. Time and space work hand in hand if not the same thing. As I flew back to Europe, finishing one book I started there, and starting another one I received in Austin, I felt myself transition as I closed the plastic 777 jet window without even looking out, and the books themselves acted as a marker of something ending and something…continuing.
Somehow it is very much within my character to not learn the names of people I will probably only see once in my life. Maybe coming from shyness, ineptitude, or a saddened place that reminds me it’s not worth the energy, for the little time spent and the distance between makes my insides time travel in ways they’re not prepared. However without paying much attention until after the fact, the names of the dancer’s in Austin popped in my mind each morning, carelessly falling into some organic place, as I walked around on day two seeing who still showed up and trying to size up the weaknesses and strengths of the group before they learned them themselves.
I could say I felt comfortable because I was back in America, or perhaps it was the Southern hospitality that is rumored to exist breeding and stirring somewhere that a boy born in the North took for granted as a bumper sticker slogan, but I can’t help but think that in the last days of April I stumbled upon a group of people, an experience I was part of, that felt like some old High School reunion of zodiacs and horoscopes lining up, like planets shifting in a weighted journey to find themselves all on the same side of the sun, manifested in a small carbon copy of strangers standing with red bull, cliff bars and knee pads. Or maybe I was homesick.
Maybe we all found ourselves, needing to climb against concrete and nails, reaching to higher places where we could bury our faces in each other and turn our backs to the daily passing of time. Learning to be gentle and strong, we found the sun and the shade and conquered repetition, silence and exhibition like we were born windmills, standing alone yet together working for a similar goal of sustainable change. Some finding it in vacation, others in courage, pain, claustrophobia or love of brotherhood. But we all acted as witness to the others and used them to see ourselves in return.
Sometimes a week can feel much longer, where residue of histories absorb more quickly down into the depths of hidden places that were thirsty for a nourishment that can only be found and not planned or sought. I like to think that for those I left behind, they are still meeting in the park, nourishing each other with open ears, soft words and hands on shoulders, eyes smiling hidden behind sunglasses."
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