"When the façade of who you think you are crumbles, and the sexy truth of what you are remains.
What remains is within - it is within."
--CHC
Last year, one of my dearest friends dove a little deeper into the practices of eastern medicine. Through regular acupuncture treatments, supplementing herbs into her diet and taking QiGong classes, she was attempting to unravel the repetitive patterns that develop with a lifetime of repressed e-motion. Just as we still do today, her and I would find ourselves strolling along these San Diego shores playing catchup on our weekly lives while envisioning where an impending future may, or may not, lead us. Casually, she would frequently refer to "the maps" that she was learning about. She would speak of the body as being activated by a series of twelve main meridians in which energy flowed. I had no fucking clue what she was talking about.
A few years back, another dear friend had loaned me Elizabeth Gilbert's New York Times best-selling novel, "Eat, Pray, Love." Ben knew I'd love it and, indeed, the book has been seminal in my life ever since. It wasn't just Elizabeth's self-deprecation, or dry wit. It was the creative fire with which she constructed the piece and how the structure of her book is an allusion to a set of Buddhist prayer beads. It was about how Elizabeth choose to re-new her view on life, this planet, our world - a place where self-realization can be discovered in a simple three-worded map. Aside from being deeply moved by Elizabeth's tales of life lessons accrued, I attempted to emulate her. For my MFA degree, I modeled my graduation thesis after the vertebral column - after all, my spine is literally the backbone of my work. I produced the portfolio and got the degree, but the deeper meaning behind Gilbert's work was still lost on me.
Over the course of this past year, I have found myself ironically attracted to the words and work of sacred sex provacateur, David Deida. Throughout most of my twenties, I rebelled against what I perceived to be 'traditional gender models' (among other things, of course). As a result, my body, voice, expressions, feelings and even ways of moving through the world, became harder, stiffer, less fluid, less flowing. Slowly, I fabricated and erected stone, wood, and other decorative façades all around me. For the past three years, my renewed commitment to dancing coupled with my loyalty to the same community - in which we spend at least ten hours a week in non-verbal conversation - has brought many of my steely defenses either crashing down to the ground or burning up in the fanning flames of transformation.
As our community member Samuel likes to say, "Deida's work is simply a map." As my friend Devi has known since she first began practicing Kundalini Yoga in the Himalayas decades ago, "The Chakra system is a map." And, as the stars have been winking at me since I was but a little girl, escaping the turbulence of my parent's home in order to seek shelter on sun-warmed sidewalks found underneath a dusk sky, "We are a map, Cara," they have merrily twinkled in their same, repetitive pattern, year after year.
Long time DanceJammer and San Diego's best didgeridoo player, Mitchell, is a Star Trekkie and astronomer when he isn't busking at Balboa Park on the weekends or when he isn't working as a cartographer during his regular, 9-5pm day job. Recently, I ran into Mitchell on a sunny Saturday morning. He shared with me the exciting news that he just purchased his first home and that he will be retiring from map making next year. He doesn't know this but he has passed the baton on to me, for I am now ready to draft, create and follow my own map. Today, I call myself a map maker.
However, my maps are not about some perceived destination; I have already discovered the treasure for where my map points to and for where it, ultimately, leads. It is within - the pirate's booty, the sunken gems, the greener grass, the new world, the precious jewels, and the opaque pearls. The hidden truth that I seek and yet simultaneously run from is within. So, then, I ask: "What journeys do I want to craft for myself along the way?" And, "what can I create that will help to support my adventure as my rocking boat bumps, crests, cruises and sways in the oncoming tides and in the violent swells that is this life?" Also, "are there maps that already exist that I can borrow, use and receive support from?"
Indeed.
Eat.
Pray.
Love.
And that's just one of many.
WHAT MAPS DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?
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| The amazing Mitchell Walker |
