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What are you?????????????????????????????????????????????????

?an animal or an animal??lamina na ro lamina na?

More writings from Walley and an introduction from Meredith Monk

                                         thank you MC

As a brief refresher to anyone who may read this, Walleye is a weekly movement and writing workshop that I try to attend on a regular basis.  I usually try to post my writings from it here but it has been awhile and the writings I am posting today are from 3 different sessions.  Most of this writing was done in a stream of consciousness fashion after working through some movement exercises.  I post them as is with no editing, so the quality may vary.  Sometimes I like what I write and sometimes I don't.

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>>>---------------------------------------11/3/13------------------------------->
I am stuck.  A bridge with nothing flowing beneath it.  Boards broken where an unaware foot has pushed through.  To collapse into a dream, I must first close my eyes.  Let the water spill forth again.  The darting silver light of a fish, the slippery trickle over a pebble.  The air carrying a veil of mist across a threshold, bride like.
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>> 
Bride like, you carry me into the underbrush.  The wild forest smell of you lulls me into a more primitive state of restfulness, deep but aware.  I have made it through another day, not yet devoured.  Before curling into the grass, I remove this skin and hang pieces of it from the antlered tips of your skull.  I am now bare in front of you, a truer version of what I call me.  I will lay here until we become one and what is left of me sinks into the moss and soil, to sleep forever.
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
I awake, cradled deep within the cage of your ribs.  I have dissolved into you.  I feel your heart beat a rhythm against my head.  Your heart is my head.  My arms rise and fall with your lungs.  My arms are your lungs.  We are hungry and we are cold.  You bend your neck finding the green shoots we need to nourish us.  I allow the little ball of warmth at my center to spread outward giving us warmth.  Us, you, I.  The space between us no longer matters because it no longer exists.  There is only this warmth and nourishment.  These taut muscles always ready to spring.  The ancient rhythm of these lungs and this heart, the cold inhale and the warm exhale.  We are always dancing, always dancing.  This is all a dance.  As I come back to me and leave you for the wider world, I make an offering of my heart, it is an exchange.  I take you with me always.  I am looking at you through your eyes, as you gaze upon me with mine.  I am, you are, we are complete.  (elk)(lower back)
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>>>------------------------------------11/10/13------------------------------->
A million upon a million points of light make up what we call a day.  Gravity pulls us not so gently to the Earth, any harder and we would fold in upon ourselves.  A compass offers infinite points of possibility but there is always a point at the center whispering the word here.  The magnetic pull Northward is meaningless without the center to be pulled from.  We think with an extremity but all feeling comes from the heart filling the cavity at our very center.  It is the heart which is at the center of the million upon millions of dances that makes up a day.
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A vulture, upon noticing it's immobile prey below, places the very tip of it's wing at the center and is carried upwards in widening circles.  Tracing a spiral in the sky, a liminal space between flight and the ritual of eating, the final goal.  The outermost feather circles up and down, eyes always resting on the center of this dance.  The center means to be satiated but not first without the preparatory caressing of the wind.
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>>>------------------------------------12/1/13---------------------------------> 
a rattle, a gourd, a shoe, a lightning bolt, Illinois, Texas, California, Oregon, Washington, Grandfather, Grandmother, Mother, Father, a dance, a death, a bar of soap, some scissors, a paintbrush, the ground, the sky, a stranger.........
shaking, growing, dancing, breaking, gazing, sweating, walking, riding, sleeping, leading, holding, feeling, pulling, dancing, dying, scrubbing, cutting, making, descending, ascending.......
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
I thought this gourd, drying, would make a fine rattle.  I imagined the shake of the seeds in it's shell but has will happen, death, Death, made itself known.  Rot set in and I found my dancing silent, the shaking my own.  Not yet dried or dead, my body moved through it's own slow rotting. 
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
a dance.  a death.  a rattle.
Who are you stranger and why are you following us?  I shake my rattle at you, to chase you away and it falls to pieces in my scarred hand.  I can no longer shake it nor do I seem to be able to shake you.  I turn my back and you are still there.  I jump up and down and you are still there.  I sit and close my eyes, where did you go?  I paint my face yellow to blend into my surroundings and the I sleep.  When I wake I am surrounded by a circle of crumbs and ashes.  These I place in my mouth and swallow.  Where am I?
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
There was an ache in my left leg that began in my heart.
(I am gathering my powers about me.)
All of this pain is beginning in my heart.
(I will destroy you.)
The ghosts were swirling about me in their dance.
(I am gathering my powers about me.)
Who are you in the shadows?
(I will destroy you.)
The traces of those I love, deceased.
(I am gathering my powers about me.)
A history of defeat.
(I will destroy you.)
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
I am gathering my powers about me
I will destroy you  
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the TRUTH of things as only Richard Brautigan can speak it

“As the bruises fade, the lightning aches.

Last week, making love, you bit me.
Now the blue and dark have gone 
and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,

then paler to become until my body 
is all my own and what that ever got me.”

—	Richard Brautigan, “As the Bruises Fade, the Lightning Aches” 4 mc

Death....death....DeatH

An intention of mine for this month is to spend much time thinking about and working with my fear of Death.  It is interesting because once I brought this intention in to the world, I began to notice Death everywhere around me.  Waking early to gifts of rat parts from my cat.  The Death of my grandmother's husband.  The dying of the leaves.  Books and films having much more to do with Death than I realized when I began them.


I do plan to take in much art and writing as it pertains to Death.  I have begun reading a book titled How To Fall and have other books about Death and dying, waiting to be read.

I am not sure why Death has always scared me so.  As with my other fears, I am trying to work with my fear of Death, rather than overcoming it.  I see the acceptance of Death has the ultimate plunge into and acceptance of the mystery that is life.  In my way of thinking, mystery is the only tangible thing worth of our worship.  Death is the greatest threshold that we ever cross because before we cross over, we have no idea what is on the other side and once we get to the other side, there is the possibility that we will know everything or that the knowing within us will cease.

Therefore, I am making a secret pact with Death, that will bind me to her, as if I had a choice in the matter.  The choice is to accept this final marriage or to run from it.  Either way it will happen, so I will begin to embrace all the facets of life that lead me closer towards Death.  I will celebrate each heartbreak, gray hair and aching joint and when my time comes, as it no doubt will, I will reach my hand out toward Death rather than pulling away.

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.” 

----"On Death" The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

                                      Halloween 2013

When Your Life Looks Back by Jane Hirshfield
When your life looks back—
As it will, at itself, at you—what will it say?
Inch of colored ribbon cut from the spool.
Flame curl, blue-consuming the log it flares from.
Bay leaf. Oak leaf. Cricket. One among many.
Your life will carry you as it did always,
With ten fingers and both palms,
With horizontal ribs and upright spine,
With its filling and emptying heart,
That wanted only your own heart, emptying, filled, in return.
You gave it. What else could do?
Immersed in air or in water.
Immersed in hunger or anger.
Curious even when bored.
Longing even when running away.
"What will happen next?"—
the question hinged in your knees, your ankles,
in the in-breaths even of weeping.
Strongest of magnets, the future impartial drew you in.
Whatever direction you turned toward was face to face.
No back of the world existed,
No unseen corner, no test. No other earth to prepare for.
This, your life had said, its only pronoun.
Here, your life had said, its only house.
Let, your life had said, its only order.
And did you have a choice in this? You did—
Sleeping and waking,
the horses around you, the mountains around you,
The buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.
Those of your own kind around you—
A few times, you stood on your head.
A few times, you chose not to be frightened.
A few times, you held another beyond any measure.
A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.
Mortal, your life will say,
As if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.

Old Woman Nature by Gary Snyder

Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
   tucked away somewhere.
   a whole room full of bones!
A scattering of hair and cartilage
   bits in the woods.
A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
   a shellmound
      a bone flake in a streambank.
A purring cat, crunching
   the mouse head first,
      eating on down toward the tail—
The sweet old woman
   calmly gathering firewood in the
      moon …

Don’t be shocked,
She’s heating you some soup.

It all makes sense if you really think about it.