Duncan on 17th

Coming home I noticed someone has conspicuously propped a book against their fence, singled it out for free taking. I didn't want to pick up another street book, really, I always do that and then they gather dust around here. But it was hard to walk away from the face that stared out in black and white from within a red border, the face of Isadora Duncan, the famous portrait that too prominently features her neck.

I was going to walk by, but I had been reading Chögyam Trungpa on the train, poetry he'd written to the Dakini in all her forms, the universe animated by dancing dakinis, mandalas of them spinning through his dreams, in various forms: "Among them, there is one dakini with a single eye, her turquoise hair blown gently by the wind," others in the red that marks all emanations of Vajra Yogini "When I met you yesterday, you wore red clothes..."

So it was hard to pass this dancer by today. I didn't know how red she was. I opened to a passage where she is teaching Russian children the language of gestures, language that floods beyond the limitations of concept.

Children, place your hand here, as I do, upon your breasts; feel the life within you. This means man. Chevolek. And now raise your arms up to the heaves. This means universe. Vyselenaia. Now let your hands fall slowly downward to the earth. Semlia. Now hold your hands toward me in love and this means Comrade. Tovarish. Isadora Speaks, page 86

What is red anyway? Of course we know that true generosity and compassion is a personal intent that can't be state mandated, so lets remove red's superimpositions and let it remain as hidden as blood. According to Trungpa, within the vehicle of Vajrayana colors eventually speak for themselves.

Here colours speak through, as do shapes and movements, until the point is reached where there is no room for a speck of dirt. The perception of the energies for the first time is so intense and overwhelming that one is tremendously impressed by their purity. Here you regard yourself as a servant for the very reason that you are overwhelmed by the purity of the universe. So you employ thousand of ways of communicating to the universe in terms of bodily purity, mantras and mudras. Mudra, page 69.

I wonder if Duncan's talent involved some sort of similar perception that had to be expressed, that moved the world, that drew people into its orbit and allowed people to lose themselves as she did in her dance, as Sandburg wrote in her honor: "The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am."

Exiled Thoughts

Yesterday I learned a new song, "Die Gedanken Zindt Frei," (Our Thoughts Are Free) at a temple Chanukah gathering. It grew on me, and I always feel super cool whenever I learn any Yiddish. The woman who taught the children the song demonstrated the freedom of thought by highlighting the enclosure of the skull, going around to children, pretending to unzip their skulls and read their thoughts, then condemn what she found in there. I enjoyed her presentation, she proved once again that when someone's creative or discursive impulse veers towards bodily imagery depth and discovering are greatly enhanced. Discursive references to the body reunite mind and body, which far too easily wander apart. The rediscovery of the body is a rather hilarious thing, I've often felt surprised and relieved to find it still there, to rediscover the vestibular intimacy of the body itself and consciously appreciate its role in shielding, to some degree, one's autonomy from the various kinds of bloody power games people have played throughout history.

I was quietly free to think to myself that in fact our thoughts are not free, completely. There are thoughts which many dare not think, thoughts exiled beyond the edges of the domain of tolerable ideas. There are thoughts imprisoned in the realm of the unthinkable. Can you believe, there are thoughts a blogger might not even write on her blog! But unlike the heretics killed throughout history, these thoughts and ideas cannot and will not go away. They must be reckoned with.

Clouds

I've been frustrated that I haven't remembered many dreams lately, but this morning I woke up to the kind that casts a long shadow across the entire day. Not a bad shadow, just a long one. In this dream I was in some kind of subway station, a fancier one like at 59th St., just standing with my back to the wall in a hall people were passing through, with Nora, my youngest daughter, under my left arm. The melody to Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" was flowing out of my mouth like a warped and bubbly stream echoing through a cave. Of course in the dream I had no idea what song it was, I only knew it was familiar and could never have remembered the words.

When I woke up, I realized that Nora really was under my arm, only it was the right one, and instantly the words to "Both Sides Now" started to run through my mind. I actually can't handle that song very well, I think it is too powerful for me like some things are, it makes me feel really sad and sentimental, and I'm afraid of its profound stickiness. But today it went through my head all day, and I realized what a sober and poetic meditation Joni Mitchell's comtemplation of life's illusions is, and I'm feeling a pretty strong nudge to read up on this really unreal woman, whose work I've never deliberately come in contact with. The video grabs me by the gut with astonishing ferocity, and I find I can't believe that anyone could be that beautiful. "So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way..." Tell me about it.

I enjoyed the novelty of humming in a dream, even if I was in some sad cave-like place. I'm vaguely aware that my dreams often occur in some labyrinthine area more resembling a major staging place like the Javits Center (depressing!), Grand Central or Ikea than some lovely coral reef or peaceful valley, but I know I'm not the only one who dreams in bleak landscapes embroidered with garbled melodies. I suspect I get frustrated and confused in many of my dreams because they simply don't make sense, and I get tired of it all and stop dreaming. Other dreams I suspect I don't remember because the content falls beyond anything I can even remotely conceptualize.

Saturday Morning Mystery

Saturday morning was a good one, even though I was having one of those dreams about the body before I woke up. Not one of those hot ones, but a pathology one. Unamed medics were working on a man who remained unknown to me, who needed alot of blood drained out of his skull. When I woke up the word "Ulna" was ringing in my ears. I didn't know what the word meant at the time, I looked it up to learn it means "elbow."

To have blood drained from the brain seems to entail a shift from thought patterns influenced by passion (in the prejudiced sense) to a mind more spacious and nonreactive. It's a very buddhist shift depicted in a charnel grounds sort of tableau. Yay! But who was that guy, I wonder. A part of me? Perhaps a reflection of how I dealt with a headache I had for 4 days in a row recently. I finally just put an ice pack on my head for about a half an hour, which did the trick.

But what about the elbow part? I've got no idea.