10 Years Ago: Learning to Dance: The Pause

 

In re-visiting this post of 10 years ago, I remembered "Caroline" and the power of a pause. Caroline is the protagonist in the book, The Camel and the Scorpion, about a young associate professor pulled into the case of an American woman arrested in Israel for espionage in the 1970s. Despite her innate shyness, Caroline had been a champion member of a college debate team; she knew that the force of a well-placed and well-timed pause is an effective tool for debates, speeches, sermons, and calls to action. [Disclosure: I know both the book's author and the real-life person who Caroline is based on.)

As a guide for daily living, there is also the acronym STOP to help us respond instead of react to an emotional or physical trigger:

• S: Stop:  Remember to pause.
• T: Take a few breaths.
• O: Observe my emotional and physical reactions in the moment
• P:  Proceed with awareness, choosing our response

 Perhaps I will claim self-actualization on the day I conquer the art of the pause.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Learning to Dance: The Pause

Dancing La Marinera in Tularosa, New Mexico. San Francisco de Paula Festival 2013.

Last year, at the Feed 'n Seed, I danced with an older gentleman. A slow-ish song. About 30 seconds into our dance, he said quietly in my ear, "Slow down, we're not in a hurry to go anywhere."

This centered me right then, and for the rest of the dance, I could be in the moment with where my partner was going and which rhythm line of the song he was choosing.

Holi Festival 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Earlier in the year, before the Feed 'n Seed experience, at a Vermilionville Bal du Dimanche, a woman generously tutored me on a zydeco movement. I had taken zydeco lessons a month or so before, and I'd learned a basic zydeco shuffle in which every beat of the eight-count in zydeco was accounted for with a step or tap. But this woman was showing me something different. I didn't see the eight counts in her steps, I couldn't replicate her movements, and it confounded me.

I asked her about the step count, and she said - bless her generous heart - "don't worry about counting, just move with the music." I couldn't do anything with that information, so I asked her to keep demonstrating her steps until I could solve the mystery. She graciously complied.

Finally, I saw it.

On the third and seventh steps, she PAUSED. The fourth and eighth step were there, but "silent." Ohhhhhh.

When I excitedly shared my newfound understanding, the woman looked a little puzzled, and then shrugged, as if to say "whatever," apparently not excited as I about my tremendous breakthrough in understanding. I'm guessing she had so internalized her step movements, she didn't even notice the pause, and thus didn't think to explain it.

Feed n Seed, Lafayette, Louisiana.

These two experiences planted seeds in my neonatal dance mind, but they didn't stick until I took a new round of zydeco dance lessons this month.

The instructor informed me several times that I was going through movements too quickly. He EXPLICITLY directed me to pause. He hammered these points when I struggled to make turns correctly, so that I'd finish on the right foot at the right beat.

Finally, I got it. I have to PAUSE when I take that first turn-step.

The pause makes all the difference.

There is a maturity, an elegance, a sensuality, in the dance pause.

It's gratification delayed, it's listening and feeling, it's a breath.



Related posts: 

Learning to Dance: Solving for X
Learning to Dance: The Tao of Following

 

Word of the Year: Meditation: Land Snorkeling

 

Caterpillar. Big Spring, Missouri. 2007. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

The title Land Snorkeling popped up whilst I was tunneling an online rabbit hole about something or another and it surely did grab my attention. I'm not gonna link that article here because its website throws up an egregious quantity of pop-ups into the faces of visitors in addition to making it too challenging to customize one's cookie settings. 

The founders of a different website, aptly named Land Snorkel, state they invented the term and its attendant philosophy.  

"Land snorkeling is taking the time to savor aspects of nature we ordinarily don’t see or pay attention to. Land snorkelers wander through nature with no real destination."

I'm happy to report to myself that I have engaged in land snorkeling for much of my adult life, although I didn't have a name for it. 

To make my foray a meditation, I abstain from phone use and earbuds, and slide up the volume of my senses: sights, sounds, smells, the touch of a breeze or the lack thereof. My focus is outward, not inward. What I mean by that is that I let go of self so that I can make room for other. 

 

 

10 Years Ago: No. Fifteen Years Ago: I've Gone Rootless

 

 

2023.0429. Cozy bed in Chez Prius. Ellis, Kansas.

 

September is the anniversary of my having gone rootless. 

It's been 15 years now. 

If all goes according to plan, I will re-root myself soon. But that's tomorrow and not today. 

In the meantime, a visit to my past: 

 

Flashback to September 2010: "I'm Going Rootless"

Gee whiz, it's been five years since I wrote my first post: 
 
 

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I'm going rootless. 

I've sold my house. Move-out day is October 15, and, as of today, I don't yet have a forwarding address.

I'm going rootless.

 

Word of the Year: Meditation: Qigong

More than 20 years ago, the local parks and recreation department offered a class in tai chi. I was the only student who enrolled. The instructor, Brandon, would have had every right to cancel the class, but he didn't. Brandon and I met once a week for six weeks and he introduced me to both qigong and tai chi. 

Brandon used qigong as the prelude to the tai chi, and I interpreted qigong as a warmup. 

Below is a video with a morning set of qigong movements.  I like this video because there's no chatter other than the intrusive sound of the ocean waves, which I turned off.

 

 Credit: Qigong Meditation

I always like the story of one of my favorite movements. It goes something like this: 

• The sun comes up
• You push open the window for a better view
• You spread the curtains wide
• You reach down and gather the sunlight
• Toss it up into the sky
• Pull what falls to your abdomen and rest your palms there

In my emerging meditation practices, the qigong movements help me focus on my physical being in its parts and its whole, pulling me out of my brain's incessant talk talk talk.

 

 

10 Years Ago: Louisiana: Sweet Potato Talk

 

I do love sweet potatoes. 

 

Sweet potatoes. Longmont, Colorado. June 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.

The original source, from Al Jazeera, about "troubling work conditions for North Carolina laborers" who harvest sweet potatoes is no longer accessible. Here is a November 2015 replacement source from NPR: Behind Your Holiday Sweet Potato Dish, Hard Work in the Fields. 

Friday, August 14, 2015

Louisiana: Sweet Potato Talk

2010 Yambilee poster, Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Louisiana

I was standing in line at my neighborhood grocery store the other day, and a man came up behind me with only one item to buy, so I invited him to move ahead of me. A happy consequence is that he noticed the two gigantic sweet potatoes I had among my stash, and this sparked a memory for him.

Yam sign outside Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Louisiana

When he was a kid, he dug up sweet potatoes during the harvest from, he said, first thing in the morning til the end of the day. It was terrible hard work, he said, but at mid-day, the labor was suspended for a large meal, which gave him energy to re-commence with the work in the afternoon. The man allowed as how it made him feel strong and good. ... though I suspect this is more how it feels to him in retrospect than at the time.

Sweet potato patties, Walmart,t Lafayette, Louisiana

The man observed that digging the sweet potatoes is no longer necessary, as there is a machine that can do it now.

Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Lousiana

Recently, I've been buying sweet potatoes in bulk because the price at my local grocer is so giddily low right now and I love the durn things. I bake two racks of them at a time, skin them, distribute them into portions, then freeze the portions in freezer bags.

Sweet potato chips, Louisiana

The man's story got me to thinking about sweet potato agriculture.

The American leaders of sweet potato production, in order from largest to smallest, are:

1. North Carolina
2. California
3. Mississippi
4. Louisiana

Louisiana State University produced the video, The Sweet Truth About Sweet Potatoes, which focuses on commercial sweet potato agriculture, from planting to harvesting and curing:

Based on what I've learned in the above video, I'm thinking the sweet potatoes I'm buying today are those that were harvested last year.

What I see in the LSU video about commercial sweet potato agriculture in Louisiana is at odds with the troubling work conditions for North Carolina laborers that I'm reading about [in 2015]. In the LSU video, I see mechanical harvesting (which conforms with what the gentleman at the grocery store told me), but the reports about North Carolina refer to hand-harvesting, which is where labor abuses come in.

North Carolina Sweet Potatoes [said] this about mechanical vs. hand-harvesting [at the time of the original post in 2015]:

"Sweet potato roots are turned up on top of the ground by a side angle disk plow and partially exposed to aid the workers in picking and sorting. Sweet potatoes are very susceptible to damage at harvest; therefore hand-harvest is preferred over mechanical harvesting. ... To harvest, the field rows are usually plowed with a modified disk or moldboard plow with a spiral attachment. Roots are then hand harvested and graded in the field. Sweet potatoes can also be dug by a chain digger or a riding harvester that conveys the roots to a sorting crew using a harvest aide. Potato harvesters are sometimes used to harvest sweet potatoes but damage is usually unacceptably high."

Even though Louisiana might use mechanical harvesting, and therefore maybe there aren't all of the same labor equity concerns here as in North Carolina, there is still a question about how commercial farmers in Louisiana protect workers during and after pesticide spraying.

Just as the movement builds to protect people from second-hand smoke in businesses .... when we have an opportunity to do so, let's encourage our food suppliers, legislators, and local, state, and federal regulatory agencies to create and enforce safeguards to protect agricultural workers (and their families - and consumers) from unhealthy work and living conditions (when provided by the farmers). Some advocacy and regulatory organizations include:

Farmworker Justice
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
United Farm Workers



On a different note ... Do you notice how I side-stepped the whole yam versus sweet potato conversation? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Word of the Year: Meditation: Coloring

 

Adult coloring books aren't anything new, of course. Coloring can get us into a flow, allow us to relax. There is also the idea of coloring to practice mindfulness and meditation.

There are legions of mandalas out there to color, but that's not where my interest lies. I like birds. And I like drawings I can color to completion in less than half an hour. 

Both Thriftbooks and BetterWorldBooks have Audubon Bird Coloring Books for sale. 

There are also coloring books that self-brand as "mindfulness coloring books." A mindfulness coloring book by Emma Farrarons drew me in right away with the cover's smple and soothing waves that would suit me well: 

Book creator: Emma Farrarons. Publisher: The Experiment Publishing

What coloring tools work well for this mindful coloring? 

Art Therapy Coloring recommends what we should and shouldn't use for adult coloring books. The following is among the shoulds: 

• Colored pencils
• Colored pens
• Gel pens
• Fine tip markers
• Watercolor pencils

There are online coloring apps for touchscreen devices. I've looked at a few, but I want to spend less time on electronic devices, not more. So for now, I will let that option rest. 

10 Years Ago: Rootless Brow-zing

 

I ventured into threading again while in Tucson. Ouch. 

In my search for past posts that touched on waxing, threading, plucking, or razoring, I uncovered one from 2014, in which a stranger in Louisiana uttered this proposition to me: 

"I'd really like to wax your car." 

 

 

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Rootless Brow - zing

The other day, I had my brows waxed. While I lay on the table, I remembered other such times.

In Awassa, Ethiopia, two men at a salon threaded my brows. After my brows got cleaned up, I continued my walk "home," and saw:  

... there were 15 giant storks. Huge. One alighted, then disgorged food into the mouths of two gangly "teenagers." I watched, agog. A short walk further, directly before me, another tree filled with storks. Walking underneath (glad I had my hat on), I looked up and counted more than 10 oversize nests. As with the Bale Mountain forest, this was the stuff of medieval fairy tales.

Around the corner-ish from my temporary digs in Istanbul, I got my whole face threaded. Amazing how that works, cause you wouldn't think it would.

In 2010, on a road trip with my mother, I had my face cleaned up in a Walmart in Canyon City, Texas.

In Rustavi, Georgia, there were a couple of rugged waxings at a local salon. Yeow. But speaking of Caucasus Georgia, the Georgian women have spectacular brows.

Here's one woman's experience getting her brows done in Nice (waxed) and Palestine (tweezed).