2 posts tagged “homecoming”
We drove and drove and touched down in Seattle late last night, but I couldn't exactly boot out my cat-sitter in the middle of the night.
Today will be the last few steps to home, for a day of hunkering and getting reacquainted with my pillows. I really am a homebody.
Today was my first dance class after a two-week hiatus, begun on account of illness and extended to see if a chronic injury I've been postponing addressing would heal with the extra rest. It feels good to move again, though hindered by tiring easily, a residual cough, and the extra layer of flesh that grew back after only two weeks (damn that was fast!). The injury (left hamstring attachment) actually seems to be mended, though a lower back ache that started just before I stopped, perhaps as a result of compromising alignment to compensate for the first ache, is still lurking. Bodies sure are tricky.
Returning to the dance studio after a break always feels like a homecoming for me. There is a sense of intimacy developed over hours of floorwork, feeling my bones and tissues supported by the floor, seeing and sensing the surrounding space, moving through the sunlit dust motes stirred up by moving bodies. The really special ones have satiny floors I've caressed with bare feet, had full contact rolling all over, flown from.
I have a particular gratitude and fondness for this studio (the big one at Velocity). During the winter of 1996-97, while my mother was dying and I was living in the Seattle area for the first time, this room was the only place in which I could feel happy. I was working part-time to spend more time with mom, and not working 40 hours gave me the freedom to take KT's weekday morning class. Her classes were my therapy and provided a life-affirming space and time even as I was losing my mom.
Since moving back here from the DC area last May, Velocity has again become a home of sorts and the only community I really feel part of so far. These past two weeks of being sick and not taking class compounded the bad-enough isolation of my home-based job, and it was such a relief to be back in the studio among friends.
There was also the homecoming of getting back into my body -- reawakening what it feels like to curve this way, fold that way, to lengthen, invert, quickly change directions and regain my bearings. To breathe. And breathe deeper. To find my center of gravity and will it to go that-a-way, shake it up, swirl it around, let it go, and enjoy the ride. Gasp! (cough!) I'm so happy to be back! Now let's see what it feels like to get back on my sadly neglected bike ...
