September Has Been...

A real strange one. Full of ups and downs. Jam packed even. This time last year I was on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and what an amazing time that was. If I could wind the clock back for just a moment so I could feel what I was feeling then, I'd be recharged with zest and wonder. I can't believe it's been a year since I took off around the world; the sheer excitement and freedom I experienced will always remain a top memory. It'll be nearly a year since I found Lo in Bali and a year later, I'm wondering where I'm at now.

Writing has been tough and I feel masses amounts of guilt for not setting aside time to do it. I know why I have these blocks now and the Universe is waiting for me to get on with it. I've been comforted by the confirmation that it is innate in me, it is in my core, so deep to a cellular level that my life's work will revolve around writing. Smaller projects have been put on pause (especially Write Club) but when I don't manage to write, I read a lot. And as long as I'm doing one or the other, I'm still involved with my world. This month I've been reading:

  

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia-Marquez (still chugging through it; it's my literary Everest for the moment)

The Story of O - Pauline Reage (not pictured, but there's no real need, it's a plain black cover; bit of a "meh" sort of book. Glad to have read it though)

Waiting for Autumn - Scott Blum (a Spiritual Quest must read)

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (a classic I should have read a very long time ago - I loved it)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (a quarter in and I'm dazzled, it's so beautifully imaginative)

Waiting in the queue I've got The Snow Child- Eowyn Ivey and 1Q84 - Haruki Marukami.

And so I've have been constantly inspired and I'm narrating mentally all the time (as per usual)  but to get things shifted, I am planning to run a few workshops where I will go on this journey with other people. Let's write, inspire each other, figure out what our own blocks and hang-ups are and progress together!

I'm working on some class ideas, excercises and tools to bring into my 'no rules, no boundaries' writing sessions. When I'm ready to go, with a venue in place, I will post up a blog/meetup/facebook page etc

It's also about bloody time that I started offering therapy services. Again, once a venue is in place (i.e a home) I will be setting up a practice so if anyone is interested in Angelic Reiki, Colour Therapy or Aromatherapy Massage then please let me know...

...no point me having all these skills and qualifications if I can't use them, eh?

As a sidebar, I've attended a couple of classes/workshops and still have a few more to go. I went to my ballet taster class and I bloomin' well loved it. It was everything I hoped it would be and what's more, the pain in my feet gave way to the joy of dancing. I was totally fine, even when I was made to skip and trot across the studio. My legs felt alive and it almost felt like they thanked me for waking them up. I got the blood pumping through them and I was incredibly energised. Unfortunately though, the pain in them has been terrible ever since, resulting in me wearing herbal medicine bandages that I was recommended at a Chinese herbal shop. I'm now on the lookout for a foot specialist and shall continue my ongoing saga of healing the nerve damage in my soles. It's certainly not going to stop me from signing up to the full 8 week ballet course beginning in October though.

I've got a Tree Wisdom distance course set up for this weekend and a Healing Art class on Wednesday to keep me going...it's themed around the Root Chakra which is precisely the Chakra I'm working on right now. Starting with some crystal healing, I bought a beautiful piece of Garnet and Fire Agate to keep in my pocket.

I've also been reflecting and drawing cards to make some sense of everything that's been happening. The most resonant cards I drew this week are:

The Shark card from Messages from your Animal Spirit Guides deck

And from the Ascended Masters Oracle deck:

Key points being: Take action, take leadership, harness your power, now's the time to make a move, target your heart's desire, shake off your fear, stop waiting around, write, teach, take charge.

I think that certainly makes it all clear...

Dance

On Friday night, the curtains went up and I was sat in the Colliseum Theatre watching Swan Lake. It was my first time watching the ballet but it felt more like a really hazy distant memory. Like a sap, I welled up within in the first few seconds of it starting. The music, the set, the tutus, the sequences and more than anything, the Snow Queen blew me away.

It got me thinking about my own dancing hang-ups. I've always loved dancing, I wanted to go to classes when I was little but never had the opportunity. Instead, I would make up my own choreography in my bedroom and dance everyday to my favourite songs. As I got older, I danced less often and well, life got in the way. I stopped excercising altogether until I took up yoga later on, the only other thing that resonated. My body wants to be flexible, graceful and strong in the legs but that all got hindered when I got these nerve problems in my feet, rendering me unable to even walk barefoot around the house.

For 6 years, they've stopped me from doing what I want to and to avoid stepping on painful flooring, I've forgotten what it's like to feel all that energy in my legs and strength in my movements. After a healing session over a week ago, I was told that it is possible for the nerves to regenerate and with some dedication, my feet can be healed. And so my reaction was to scout for an adult beginners ballet class. I've found just the perfect thing, I've found the perfect shoes and soon I'll take my inner child to a dance class and heal my adult self. My legs seem to know it's coming, they're wanting to stretch and bend more in anticipation.

About 3 years ago, I wrote a poem about a dream I had, and it feels more close to me now than it did at the time:

Past Life

I twirled and twirled on my toes

in another time, on another plane.

That floor was mine upon which

I could prance and swish, no longer a wish.

I wore ballerina shoes, soft pink

and spectators were there I think, watching me

I could bend and hop, my body was free to feel

each move, such grace.

Not sure which country or place but I was there

and it was me and I was dancing, spinning like so.

A ballerina I was, a long time ago.

In the Shadows

Every now and then I rediscover an appreciation for an art and then like a maniac I indulge in it for a condensed period of time and long to be able to create the same, but of course I can't do everything! I do however need to be constantly inspired seeing as though what I do involves a lot of imagination. I am incredibly visual and things not only stick better in my mind if I see them, but also I write from my photographic memory and it's the little details in each image that spur on a brand new idea.

Image from We Heart it

I once read in a very helpful book that when we write, we must write with our most honest voice and explore our 'shadow selves', the darker parts of ourselves. It is important to question and pick through what it is that makes us, us. Things have much bigger impact if they are somewhat curious or bizarre and for myself in particular, I admire things that are beautifully tragic, or tragically beautiful, however you wish to see it.

I've done a lot of this 'shadow self' thinking and I've often discussed with friends how we sometimes love to feel odd, different, a little dark (in a Tim Burton way) and sometimes even melancholic. I'm a sucker for putting on a sad song if I already feel sad, I'll wallow I admit - but how else can I describe that emotion if I don't explore it and really feel it?

Image from the movie Sleepy Hollow

But more to the point, dark things can be poetic and beautiful or at least on the surface, visually stimuating. I pick myself apart a lot, especially in this blog, if you hadn't noticed already!

I'm working on a collection of poems at the moment (amongst a tirade of other projects) and I promised myself I would write it with that voice, delivering the dark and the beautiful that rise up within like a serpent in those silent moments. Each poem will be set in 'darkness' or night time to be more accurate, with all its unsettling connotations as well as its magical ones.

My favourite show as a little girl wasn't My Little Pony but Knightmare and my favourite Roald Dahl story was The Witches. My favourite movies were films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and The Lost Boys and at five years old my ears pricked up the first time I heard the song "Poison" by Alice Cooper. But of course, I don't just have a gothic's heart and managed to come into adulthood quite tame despite my querky interests as a child. I complimented them with the fluffier things in life like Disney, Sylvanian Families and Motown music (the rocker in me won the battle in the end) - the 'light' side of ourselves is just as important. 

So to make this blend work in a creative way, I sift through art until it strikes that chord and I think 'that's my style'...this week, two things have popped up: shadow theatre and ballet. I love shadow theatre and it's an art that I didn't really take heed of until I came across an amazing performance in Exeter. It was winter and it was late at night and on the side of the old town church, a dark fable was shown from a projector, the giant shadows twisted and danced upon this perfectly chosen building and I was enamoured. I unfortunately didn't get the name of that performance or the company that displayed it but I did find this shadow animation on YouTube which gives you the idea of shadow theatre if you've never paid attention to this sort of thing before. It's pretty and enchanting and I admire just how much work and creativity has to go into something like this.

The second thing that had me "ooh" and "ahhh" was Angelin Preljocaj's ballet interpretation of Snow White which showed last week at Saddler's Well Theatre in London. This darker, sexier version is something I really want to see and could be inspiring on so many levels. I'm absolutely gutted that I wasn't home to see it but I'm hoping it'll come back sometime in the not so distant future.

Snow White Ballet Performance

 “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

― Carl Jung