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.

**************************************************************************************
>>>---------------------------------------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)
**************************************************************************************
>>>------------------------------------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.
<<<<<<<<<------------------------------------------------------------>>>>>>>>>
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.
**************************************************************************************
>>>------------------------------------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  
************************************************************************************** 


 

 

Writings from Walleye Vol. #3 7/15/13

********************************************************************************

There is an ache in my shoulders from breaking trees.  The muscles pulled tight from the rise and fall.  My legs still shakey with the energy of last nights tremblings.  And all this time I was a ghost, haunting familiar terrain, where I shouldn't have been.  In sleep, I have been aware of a warm, black presence that is in my heart but that I am only given seconds to caress.  Death and sleep being so similar that sometimes the threshold blurs and you can float back and forth and find a true love dwelling there.

*********************************************************************************

What would happen to a flower, if it chose not to bloom?  To not uncurl and show it's center, the truest reflection of the sun.  How would it dance with the breeze, a shy partner hiding itself in the corner of the room, hoping it's singular magnificence goes unnoticed?  A subtle shift is all it needs to open up and become that living thing it was meant to be, a golden heart at the center of a stem.

*********************************************************************************

A Three Lined Score
1.  The sun hits it's zenith and instead of continuing West, returns East.
2.  There is a zoo and it is on fire.
3.  A hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower, freezes and falls dead.

*********************************************************************************

A Sea Wall That Longs to Break
1)  Why does it want to break?
2)  What will happen when it breaks?
3)  How will the breaking impact it's surroundings?
4)  What will the wall be after it breaks and is no longer a wall?
5)  What function will it serve in it's new form?
6)  Will it miss being a wall?
7)  Does it understand that once it isn't a wall, it can never be the same wall again?
8)  Do any of these questions even matter to the wall?

*********************************************************************************

Writings from Walleye Vol. 2

How long does it take the Earth to give birth to a mountain?  The rumbling and grinding of rock upon rock, pushing in a skyward direction, while at the same time pushing back towards the center.  The way that each mountain grows uniquely and slowly, all so that the Earth may again find contact with the Sun and the Moon, other heavenly bodies.  All so the Sun and Moon can rise and then fall.  A returning.


From the moment we come into the world it is good to find the space to be cradled.  Held as our bodies give motion to our oldest feelings.  The oceans and rivers that flow inside of each of us and sing us to sleep with the gentle sound of air curling into a seashell.  Maybe our hearts are the shells that know how to sing our truest songs?


Following the voices backwards through time.  Weaving a story that travels through and with your bodies.  The voices of the past and mostly of shared blood carry you forward, out of the deep sleep of the forest and towards the night sky.  Let yourself be cradled, as you were in birth, one tiny but important piece of the love and hurt, that is the birthright of us all.  These will provide you a line, so that wherever you are, you will always know the way home.


The anticipation leads the way or takes the backseat.  You will go this way or you will not.  Your hands will rise over your head or remain by your sides.  What is that tugging at your sleeve and spinning you around?  Do you know where you are, who I am?  Who are you?