Come for the Play, Stay for the Music

Starting something new is never easy. It often feels like starting over. I keep thinking about how many times I have done this. I'd like to say this was the last time, but I know there will be plenty of new challenges. I will say that I am coming to the end of what I hope is the last major shift of my life. I have wanted to hurry it. Patience has never come easy to me. I am easily frustrated. On the other hand I have a bull-headed stick-to-it-ness that lends its own set of troubles and boons.

I have been a fan of drastic changes in my life. If I were a betting woman, I would be an all-or-nothing player. I am all in. No one can say that I am not passionate. If I believe in something, I believe it with all my being. This is a good and a bad thing (Isn't everything?) The pattern is that I throw myself into a role that I believe in, make all the changes, and cut the ties to the old. It seems easier. Then you just don't deal with the old stuff. It's gone. New play.

But the last production still bears an influence on the new. The players may change but the central character stays the same. (That's me. I get to be the lead in this play. It's my damn play.I'm telling this story.)

So now I am unraveling the story, because I have forgotten it. I need a new narrative. There is some dramaturgy work to be done here.

Setting:
Central Texas.

For me this is where life truly began as an adult.  Leaving my childhood home in a yellow Pinto, packed and ready to go the morning after high school graduation, I came to Austin to go to study theater at the University of Texas. That summer, I worked as a costume mistress for the UT summer stock. I was Joe York's dresser in "Company." I met my friend Janie living in Kinsolving and learned to love dive bars. We walked over to "Hole in the Wall," ventured out to the Backroom on Riverside, sat on the grass at outdoor festivals. We were sure that the Austin City Council's main job was to entertain its residents. Live music, beer, days in the sun at Barton Springs...

I went to school too. Took dance classes and acting classes and worked in the Costume and Scenery shop. Art History, Costume History. Dr. Reinhardt, who taught Costume History, said that I always looked like I had just come out of a windstorm. I did. Long, crazy curly hair. It was the 80's, so I even permed it to make it curlier. Dance clothes with a wrap-around skirt tied over it and leggings were my costume. After a year, I left the dorm to move in with my cousin. It seemed I needed supervision.

Austin was different then. Rent was cheap, it was easy to go to Barton Springs, outdoor concerts were low-key and neighborly. I was in Heaven.

I met my bass player on the Spring dead day, the day between the last day of classes and exams. Janie and I took a six-pack and some snacks to Poor Man's Barton Springs for the afternoon.

When the beer ran out, we realized that it had to be happy hour some where, so we packed up and headed to the Flying Circus, where we proceeded to allow ourselves to be picked up by a pair of musicians.

My life was about to change for the second time in my newly adult life. I was about to become a traveling musician's girlfriend.

What do you call a musician without a girl friend?

Homeless.

Namaste' y'all.

My body leans to the left

In yoga, our bodies tell a story, sometimes one which we are unaware of and disconnected from.

In class yesterday, we were talking about how we block the memory of pain. Not only does the mind have a mechanism to deal with extreme pain of the body, but the whole point of anesthesiology is to help us to forget the ordeal. Still, the residue remains.

It has come to my attention how I favor one side of my body over another. I lean my head slightly to the left, my chin does not hang center but to the left ( I found this laying on a bench in a supported bridge pose with my head hanging off; I'm loving Iyengar yoga.), I lean my weight to the left and jut the left hip out. All of these things are my body speaking, and I think they speak of protecting the left side, which has been injured repeatedly.

When I was about eleven, I was riding my bike in our neighborhood. We lived in a condo neighborhood on the Dickinson Bayou. There was a circle that the housing was arranged around and a rode that came off of the circle that led to the bayou where there was a boat ramp. I liked to ride my bike down the hill toward the boat ramp. It felt like I was flying and could take off over the water. At the last minute, I would turn to the left and take the road that ran behind the condo building.

On this particular day, there was a car coming from the left. My bicycle collided with the Jeep and it ran over my left arm crushing the joint. The pain must have been excrutiating. I don't know. I passed out. I came to fleetingly when my mom showed up. I remember how scared she was that my arm had been over my head. They hadn't moved me yet. It must have been a mess. The people who were in the Jeep were our next door neighbors. They would have known where to find her quickly.

I vaguely remember the emergency room. They put me in surgery. This one blurs with another that came soon after. Another bicycle accident, another trauma. They slide together. In the second case, I knocked my front teeth out, had a head trauma, and surgery on my nose that was broken. I remember going to the bathroom and seeing a monster in the mirror; that monster was me.

When I woke up my arm was in sling over my head, and I was flat on my back. They had put my elbow back together and held the pieces together with a pin. I was to be in traction for at least a month. I went from freedom to immobilization and isolation.

I spent almost 6 weeks like that. My father spent every night sleeping on a cot in my room. He kept on lawyering and spent his nights with me.

They finally took me down and released me. The pin had been a corkscrew that came in from the bottom of the elbow; what would have been the top when attached to the traction pulley. When they took it out, it hung over my head dripping blood like a scene from a horror movie.

The real horror was that another surgery was necessary. Another pin was put in from side-to-side and my arm was hoisted over my head again. I had several hours of release and freedom to move from the bed and it was right back where I was. I remember being devastated.

I healed. I went to physical therapy. I don't remember the pain so much.

I do remember the feeling of being trapped, immobilized, helpless.

And my body has been affected ever since, partly by the sense memory and partly by the adjustments it had to make to the injury. My arm still does not straighten and won't really support me. Handstand evades me as a pose; in fact it terrifies me.

That's why hanging from the wall yesterday was so blissful. I was able to experience the feeling of inversion without stress and fear.

I felt that freedom that I used to feel when I rode my bike down the hill.

I've had other attacks to the left: When I was pregnant with Sarah, I was T-boned by a car coming from my left. My lower back bears that scar in a vertebrate that gets inflamed periodically. A man caught me with a right hook to the left side of my face, causing me to lose another tooth. And most recently, the car accident a little over a year ago where a car took out the left side of my little red car from behind. http://ruthiengelke.blogspot.com/2013/12/car-wreck-gratitude.html

These traumas to my body have done something to me. I have tried to push them under and ignore them. It seems the natural thing to do. But the cost is a lack of awareness. The fear comes out somehow. The examined life is no picnic, but the cost of not examining is high. We lose other things.

I don't want to run on fear anymore. I have for quite some time. I had a reason to look for safety.

If I do not dare to fly (because I am afraid of being hit by a small truck), I cannot fall.

I think it is important to note that the left side of the body is traditionally seen as the female and emotional side of the body. So it is significant to me that my injuries are on this side. I have felt attacked and vulnerable on my feminine side and have learned to protect it.

Another story.

Namaste' y'all!

Opening up the Throat

This is my first post this year.

My last post was on December 30, 2014. It's a reaction to some poetry that revealed some difficult truths. The one before that only acknowledges my move from the apartment in Pearland to the Love Shack in Buda.

I haven't been writing.

I haven't been speaking much either.

This past week I started feeling congested in my neck and shoulders. It felt blocked and cramped up mostly in that triangle where the neck meets the shoulders on the upper back. It hurt to raise my head. Then, I started feeling foggy in the back of the head and sensed fluid behind and below my ears, running down the back sides of my neck.

The neck and throat carry our mechanism for communication. I had some kind of a traffic jam going on. In fact, it is still clearing out. Traffic is slow, but it is moving.

I have been attending a few classes at an Iyengar studio in Austin. This blog began when I went to a workshop in Albuquerque that was at an Iyengar studio. I seem to be called back. My teacher was leading a workshop on the throat and neck this weekend,so I spontaneously jumped in.

I am so glad that I did. The work we did really helped me to begin to unclog the channel in my neck and throat where there is this traffic jam. One of the things we did was to create a sling to hang upside down from the wall. It was tremendous. I have difficulty going upside down because of my crushed left elbow. I have never been able to support myself comfortably. The ropes were able to support me and allow me to hang free. We did several poses at the wall where we trussed ourselves up in different ways to use the support of the ropes to free our poses. It was nice just to relax into them. I loved it.

The area that I have described as being congested is also part of the yoke that binds the arms to the torso. The arms reach out to the outside world and draw it in. We use our arms to encircle loved ones, to hug them to our hearts.

This is also the area where the head joins the torso and the rational and intuitive join the earth body. Input from our visual and auditory senses integrate with the tactile receptors in our hands and feet. It's a real crossroads here.

My blockage seems to come from my tendency to get stuck not being able to speak.

I can feel it, and I can draw on my senses, but I have not been able to use my voice. Thus, the blockage occurs. So much has gone in and not much has come out.

So, here I go. I am taking it slow, but I am loosening up my voice. I have been listening and watching and absorbing and processing. It is time to start to make sounds and be heard. I feel I have been holding back and protecting, choking back my complete expression.

I'm making a commitment to write every day. I haven't even been writing in my hand notebook. I've got to set aside some time to do this every day.

I think I need to do some singing too, make some beautiful noise.

I also need to talk to people. I have not been reaching out and talking to friends enough.

Namaste' y'all!