Friday, May 27, 2011

Cold damp Earth

I am alone.
Silence surrounds me.
 Only the occasional bird song
I find a fern. She is at the base of a tree.
This could be any fern at any tree.
But today I decide to dedicate my dance to the uncurling of her leaves.
My body mirrors her struggle against the sometimes cold wind.
Words start to come out of my mouth.
'I am hungry'.
'I want to grow.'
'I HAVE NO PLANS. I trust the Universe to provide for me.'
Meanwhile my physical body starts becoming weaker... I am starving. So hungry all of a sudden that my normal energy starts to disapate.
Still I keep moving.
The fern calls me. She moves me.
I find my hand suddenly on the moist earth.
It rips out a baby plant.
All of a sudden my heart is filled with sorrow. HOW can we live so unconciously? _ As to rip living beings out of the earth for no reason. All of that hard work; their whole life was spent organizing their solid roots and then a big clumsy hand destroys it in one swift swoop.
I dance the sorrow dance.
I craddle the still breathing plant in my arms and dance for it.
'I want to grow'
'I have no plans'
'I am soooo hungry' Feed me mother earth, nourish me.
Slowly my dance ends in that moment of time...
yet my walk home continues in the same sort of manner.
My feet move and my arms paint the picture of the woods around me.
With my hands I gather and disperse the energy of each attentive living breathing plant being.
I orchestrate oxygen.
Into my lungs and out again.
This cycle will never cease as long as I experience this life.
This too is my dance.

The path to the unknown. May we all walk along this path with an open and trusting heart.



Are all trees really one and the same??

3 comments:

  1. Welcome Norianna, what a lovely, poetic post. You speak to something that I feel is core to my own practice: that is the change in the way I feel and interact with my surroundings and all the "others" after a dance: "Slowly my dance ends in that moment of time...
    yet my walk home continues in the same sort of manner." Sometimes I think of this experience as an altered state...(sometimes as an "altared" state) where the connection with trees and air and lungs and beings seem to come alive in movement.Maybe our disconnection is what is "altered" and the connected, sensitized, moving state is what is natural, normal, healthy. Thank you again for the post! Looking forward to talking with you soon.

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  2. "I want to grow
    I have no plans
    I am soooo hungry"

    the title of cold damp earth is very visceral to me, i am imagining that sensation.. mmm.

    i am connecting to this, and the tree.
    it reflects my own searching. the tree grounding. strong.
    are they the same? that question is one i'm going to meditate on.

    i also connect deeply to the path of the unknown, the picture seems to show a welcoming gateway. the unknown seems not so scary when viewed thru your lens.
    thank you nori.

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  3. dear nori... welcome! thank you for dancing your sorrow for your / the unconsciousness for us all... for sharing your moment of connection to fern, to earth, to air, to it all... to trust, to the cycles of life and death... the continuity of it all... felt like i was with you... feeling the hunger and the beauty of this practice that connects us so deeply to that which surrounds us - dancing and beyond dancing! thank you!

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