He began to pull on the leash. He barked nastily at another dog. A passerby shot me a judgemental look and my anxiety grew. Finally, when we got to a quiet spot, I let him go and sat down at the edge of the  water. He wandered off a short distance to eat some horse poo, but when I told him no, he came back by my side and settled down.

I listened to the water and let my mind be stilled (more or less). I heard inwardly that I have to pay attention to how I feel. It sounds so simple, but I have never been taught to prioritize my own emotions. Prioritizing my own experience doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do things for others, but that I should pay attention to how I feel in the doing and to make sure I honor myself, whatever the task.

I tend to spend a lot of energy worrying about whether or not everyone else is ok, about what everyone else is thinking and feeling, instead of being grounded in my own thoughts and feelings, my own truth. But now, I have to take responsibility for my own happiness. It cannot come from any other source.

Now, I know this is an obvious truth. I’ve read it a thousand times in a thousand ways. I thought I understood it intellectually, but there I was putting Chulo’s needs before my own and seeing that this is what I do with everything. I have lived unworthy of my own attention. I think this is probably true of a lot of women.

After I sat with this for a spell, I got up to leave. I felt that there was a shift of energy between Chulo and me. He was calm and walked behind me off the leash. I realized that he didn’t want me to put him first. I know this is Cesar Millan 101, but Chulo is my first dog and since I can’t afford a house visit from Cesar, I have to learn this for real, through actual self-understanding. It’s one thing to watch an edited version of other people going through this on reality tv. It is quite another to be in the hot seat yourself.

Which on a deeper level makes me think about how we learn. We can learn facts through our intellect, but the really important stuff of life has to be felt through experience. All the spiritual texts in the world can only be a guide. I remember a long time ago, I think in high-school, coming across the quote from the Buddha, “Seek no refuge outside of yourself. True happiness comes from within.” Today, I am the buddha.

May 14th,

Two little birds swing

On thin branches, suddenly

All the leaves have eyes.

One day, while driving around in the Grey Pearl, I wanted some company, so I switched on the radio. The tape and cd player haven’t worked in ages, which doesn’t stop me from having tapes and cds in the car. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them. It’s sort of like keeping a picture of an old person from when they were young. You want to remember them in their glory days. Or maybe I just want to remember myself that way: Tai and Natasha driving downtown on the FDR listening to Missy Elliot, Tai driving to Boston for the first time listening to Destiny’s Child, etc.

The Grey Pearl is at the point in her life when I’ve stopped fixing things. She’s all meals-on-wheels-y and has the eau of stale popcorn and wet dog. I take her out once in a while for a slow drive to the Stop-n-Shop.

April 24th, Buy turkey sausages and tangelos. Not necessarily in that order. pause pause pause pause pause pause pause pause pause pause pause…

The radio still works as long as you don’t have the wiper blades on, the lights on, or the defroster on. She can only handle one function at a time before she starts screeching like a Nazgul, a sound so ghastly, it makes even the hardest homie on the corner cringe with fear as I roll by. This gives me pleasure.

It’s hard to mention the Grey Pearl without indulging in a bit of nostalgia. But this is not about her. It’s about what I heard on the radio that day.

It was a sunny day. I risked the radio without a complaint from Pearl. I tuned into NPR with me and Pearl cruising along at 30 mph. Good times.

April 29th, Let go let go let go let go open open open…

Enough of this it’s time for bed

Undo the thread of writing dread

Unknow my head

Uncross my doubt

Navigate the round-a-bout

The moment I switched on the radio, I heard a male voice say, “If you want to write, you have to write every day. Around the 21st day, something happens. It takes on a life of its own.” I took this as a sign.

I drove home with images of how I might transform into a Rumi or a Murakami after my twenty-one days of writing. One day they might even interview me on NPR!

I wanted to take on the challenge. I tried to write every day, but some days I just couldn’t. I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. I gave up, boo hoo. I’d heard from writers before that in order to grow, you have to make it a daily practice, but I could never assume that discipline.

I mentioned this to an artist friend of mine who suggested just writing without any agenda. Without the need to share it or even have it make sense. Just practice every day, even if you write the same word over and over again.

April 28th,

Inscrutable Inscrutable Inscrutable Inscrutable Inscrutable Inscru–

Let’s keep dancing, shall we?

Maybe not.

Genius isn’t creating.

It’s knowing when to stop.

Stop your roll

Stop your flow

You enter things you should not go

Ho ho, said the keeper of the beat

Learn to make your moves discreet

I do not mend the mind that flows

It knows its road

It holds its goal

The soul of hand, of paper, pen

That moves the glen

Of writing zen

Cannot compete with screens of light

Of kindle fires made with wires

Delight the light-weight simpleton

Whose cannot carry shoulders win

The world gets smaller every day

A box-shaped box

Has found its way

Into our hearts

And don’t forget the world of art!

It’s found its way inside there too

Next to the extinct kangaroo

Reducing nature to a myth

No one will remember this

Except in dreams

That thing of green

You mean a tree?

Is that its name?

A fiction, unicorns the same.

His words freed me. Writing became a part of my daily practice. I found that because I had to write things down, I could not avoid anything. What I mean is, often when I feel blue let’s say, I try to avoid or change this uncomfortable feeling, but I found that, in the space of avoidance, I couldn’t write. Not even a stream of consciousness. I had to write the truth of what was and somehow the writing of it allowed me to process it and move on. I know this is nothing new. That’s why people keep journals. It’s just new for me.

I became interested in the process itself. I started out printing by hand. Then, a day or two into the twenty-one day challenge, my writing switched to cursive, mid-sentence. Then one day, I started writing vewy vewy small.

May 15,

I am so lonely. I am Yoda’s little brother, only five hundred and eighty-seven years old. I am not a Jedi like my brother. I am an alcoholic.

The rest of the family does not talk backwards like Yoda. We speak in straight sentences. Our father tried to beat it out of him, this quirkiness of speech. He said it’s a big waste of commas, so Yoda ran away.

Yoda came to my room one night. He said, “Fred, running away, I am. Take the beatings any more, I cannot. Miss you, I will.”

I cried. I begged him to stay, or take me with him. He said I was too young, only eighty-seven at the time. That’s young for us Yodas.

Yoda, incidentally, is the family name. The one you call Yoda is Clavsti(((comb Yoda. It’s hard to pronounce in your tongue.

Before he left, he gave me an (((-))) 8, which is a kind of seventeen legged creature from our planet. It wasn’t a real (((-))) 8, but fashioned out of mud and aluminum foil. By swinging it in loops from its tail, Yoda said I could contact him wherever he was in the universe.

At night, I like to swing my (((-))) 8 by its tail and talk to my older brother. I like to believe that he can hear me, wherever he is. Sometimes I hear stories at the bar about the great Master Yoda, about the battles he’s fought against the empire. I like to wave my three-fingered fist in the air and cheer him on: Go Clavsti(((comb!

Epilogue: Day twenty-two

A dose of nature

Free me from this mundane head

All the snakes are out.

Still feeling the effects of the new moon, new.

This morning, I sat at the altar and spoke for a long time. I am ready to let go.

Then, while hiking in the Blue Hills, I saw a snake, coiled and still. I thought it might be a sign, but did it read as shedding or death? I nudged it gently with a stick. It lifted its head and stuck out its tongue. Very much alive.

Letting go of the past, of what might have been, has been such a long deal (seventeen years, give or take). For those years, I often had the idea of letting go, but now it is ripe in my heart.

Before me lies an unknown path. The unknown path has always been there. I’ve spent a good amount of time avoiding that way, but the unknown path is all there is.

THE UNKNOWN PATH IS ALL THERE IS. Anything else is illusion.

We are forever facing it. I am facing it consciously because the path I’ve known has become too heavy to bear a moment longer.

This unknown path, maybe, it’s what I am. I, you, we, are the path, and it never ends. You never get there. But we have to keep moving forward for its own sake.

I remember that time I got high with my Auntie in California. We were walking through the woods and came to a grand vista. I got stuck at this spot, simply because it was so beautiful.

I didn’t want to leave this beauty behind, so she gently took my head and turned it toward the direction in which we were walking.

“What do you see now?” she asked.

“More beauty,” I answered, and with that, we happily resumed our walk.

I learned in that moment that the beauty never ends. It is with us in every moment, eternal, supreme, unconquerable.

It’s as though the more certain forces try to define it, to colonize it, the more opposing forces rise to free it.

So today, I let it go, not because I fell out of love or was hurt by it, but because I love it. And because I love myself.

I won’t say what it is. You can fill in your own blank. We all have something to let go of, something to forgive.

Ashe.

“The health of the eye depends on a horizon.”–Emerson

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the mystical branches of spirituality. As part of my search, I occasionally sought divinations including I-ching, tarot, palm readings, astrology (both Western and Vedic), channelling, past-life regression, Michael charts, numerology, Ifa readings and most recently, the shell divination of the Dagara tradition of Burkina Faso as taught and practiced by Malidoma Some.

I go to see a diviner when I need help from the other side. The strength of a diviner seems to be based on the extent to which they are able to become a vessel for a disembodied being: an ancestor, a spirit guide or angel, a kontomble (the little people in Dagara cosmology), etc.

I consider divination to be a kind of art. Finding a good diviner is sort of like finding a good massage therapist. Everyone has a different style. You just have to find the one that works for you.

Skeptics argue that diviners are charlatans who are only after money, but such charlatans exist in every field. These skeptics also argue that diviners say such general things that may be true of just about everyone, but so do most doctors. Even as a ballet teacher, I find myself saying the same things over and over again to different students because people tend to make the same mistakes.

I go with the understanding that even the shabbiest diviner can extract a kernel of truth from the cards, bones, shells or what have you, and it is then up to me as to what I do with that message. Of course, one should practice discernment when going to see a diviner. When you hear the truth, you feel a kind of resonance with it and it’s ok to trust that. If you don’t feel resonance, go to someone else.

Getting a divination from a skillful diviner is like being served a large meal. You can’t eat everything on the plate, but you do the best you can. Some of the things you may not initially understand and you find that the message unfolds mysteriously in layers as you become better able to digest it.

For example, one of the things Malidoma told me in a divination was that I had a weakness in nature. A weakness in nature, now what could that possibly mean? It’s true, as I said in the previous post, that I have a thing for trees. Is that what he meant? Or does the weakness have something to do with my own nature? What is my nature?

During the divination, you are free to ask questions, but at the time, I was so busy trying to grasp other things that I let the weakness in nature issue go until several months later another diviner of the same tradition told me the same thing. And yet a third Dagara diviner looked at my numerology and verified this weakness in nature yet again.

But what does that mean? I decided to start spending more time in nature. Perhaps I would find my answers there. My husband and I started taking almost daily hikes in the Blue Hills reserve, not far from where I live in Boston.

No matter how reluctant we are to make the twenty-minute drive, we are always grateful that we made the effort. We notice that every time we walk through the woods, whatever stress we are carrying is magically cleansed and there is always a gift: a tiny bird’s nest, six hawks that swooped close by, a gentle rain, a horizon, a new path. And we notice too, that the rest of the day seems to flow more sweetly after the time spent in nature.

As I started to become nourished by nature, further understanding of my divination began to unfold when my husband and I took a trip to Manhattan to look at museums and galleries. The streets were crowded. It was a nice weekend but the more we walked through the chic lower West side, the more I started to wither inside myself. Feelings of alienation and inferiority began to overwhelm me. Everyone and everything was so fabulous. I felt like a dandelion struggling through a crack in the cement, surrounded by rare and exotic flowers.

I grew up in New York City and the place holds a lot of memories for me. At night, I was assaulted by dreams of experiences in which I was made to feel small. In those moments, when I felt weak in the presence of others, I could see how my lack of strength in my own nature caused me to cower. Sometimes this energy was intentionally inflicted but other times not. I was just too easily intimidated because I was un-rooted, not at home inside myself, and easily blown off-balance, like a shallowly rooted tree in a hurricane.

Aha! So this is how the weakness in nature manifests itself in me. I could see how I built up an armor around this wound without having healed it and how the recent initial healing in nature was allowing me to see this issue more clearly in myself. I could see how my nature is tied to the big nature of the world. And at last, I could feel some compassion for myself. Finally, I could unclasp the heavy armor encasing my heart, and reveal it without shame, naked and bleeding, because in my embrace of nature, I have begun to take root.

Malidoma says that a weakness in nature is common for modern people. During my recent visit to NY, I could see evidence of that. In a city, we are constantly told how to be, what to think and do. Walk, don’t walk. Buy this. Eat here. Don’t stop. Keep moving. Faster. Upgrade. I think even if you are strong in your nature, everyone is influenced by city persuasion to some extent.

And I’m not saying that those things are inherently bad. I like sushi and a fancy pair of shoes. I’m just saying that it’s easy to lose yourself by being swept up in a tide of fabulousness that has nothing to do with who you really are. To know nature is to know yourself. And to know yourself is fucking fabulous.

You’ve heard the platitude “We are all more alike than we are different” that people utter for the sake of tolerance and inclusion. Well, I like to ponder the possibility that we are all the same, just one big jellyfish. And as soon as I say that out loud, someone gets mad at me. They want to defend their right to be separate. To not be jellyfish.

I mean, I get it. We are different, but that’s only part of the story, no? Where is the line that separates us? I’ve always been a little fuzzy on the line between reality and illusion too. In spite of this, I am a practical person. My interest in the One-ness of the Is-ness is practical. I look at the big flow and that expansiveness tends to fuel and elevate my little flow. I hope I can continue to do so in the moment of my death.

Speaking of the One-ness of the Is-ness, maybe we are appearing in each other’s dreams and neither of us would be here if that were not the case. I’m here because of you and vice versa. Instead of pointing the finger at someone for something they did to us, we could ask, hmm, now why is so-and-so showing up in my dream? What part of me dialed him in? What was I needing when I made that call?

I’m not saying that each person is responsible for causing everything he/she experiences and I’ve heard the Abraham teachings (channeled by Esther Hicks) ad nauseam. I’m just saying that when I am able to look at people, things and experiences as not-separate, part of one flow, I expand into that flow. That is all a very round-a-bout way of saying that maybe you’ve been looking for Mr. Octopus, and he’s been looking for you too. He says hi.

Mr. Octopus first appeared to me as a child. According to my mother, she would find me sucking my thumb, staring intently up at the ceiling. When asked what I was looking at, I would point and say, “Octopus.” This pronouncement seemed all the more significant because, I am told, that I rarely spoke as a child.

My dog does this. Not suck his thumb, but looks at things that I can’t see but that are definitely there to him. Just something to think about.

Anyway, I had no memory of these octopus sitings except for the memory that exists from stories, like in dreams. Do you ever find yourself in a dream, remembering things, places, people, experiences,  from within the dream world? It’s as though your dream self has its own memory bank that can only be accessed there. Then one day, as I was minding my own business writing my blog, he appeared. And here’s where things get tricky, for I suppose that I appeared to him the same moment he appeared to me. Or, was he there all along, watching discreetly, waiting for the right moment to pounce? Let’s ask the octopus himself, shall we?

“So, Bubby, have you been here all along, or did you appear in my dream/life at that fateful moment?” I ask.

“Yes and no,” he says, with an ineffable wink.

See what I mean? It’s complicated. You might ask if Mr. Octopus really exists and I would have to quote him by answering yes and no. But, he is certainly somewhere, wouldn’t you agree? He’s in my mind, and now to some extent he’s in yours too. Tag, no backsies!

Let’s take an outward approach to the question of identity, for that is the simplest. He’s an octopus unlike any other. His style is old-fashioned, like the slim monocled New Yorker mascot, but not as snotty. Unless of course he’s being snotty. He certainly does have an edge that is smart, sexy, mysterious and dangerous. He’s not dangerous because of anything he does or says. It’s just that his very presence tends to stir things up, push people past their comfort zones. That sort of thing.

He is laid back and thorough in most things because he has all the time in the world. (He likes that I said that about him. Have I mentioned he’s vain?) He is completely free of the judgement of others and completely himself, that is to say, in his nature. And he is able to change his nature at will but prefers to appear as a dandy, in his bow tie, delicately sipping a cup of tea. And, this just in, he wants me to add that he occasionally enjoys a good pipe of opium.

And he is terribly naughty, but would prefer a good conversation to sex most of the time because you can have sex with anybody (his words, not mine!).

Get this: he wants me to get a tattoo of him on my right inside forearm. Oh, the cheek! It’s not just the pain of getting a tattoo in such a sensitive area, it’s his entitlement that really gets me. But if I so much as complain about this new whimsy of his, he’ll merely give me one of those irresistible winks and in I’ll cave. I’ll just spill all over myself like the big aquarium at the beginning of ‘Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo.’ We love that movie.

Now, I am familiar with the term “imaginary friend.” I have to whisper it because it would offend Mr. O to hear himself reduced in this niggardly way and I don’t blame him. People who use such terms as “imaginary friend” have no imagination in my opinion. They are not comfortable without labeling every nook and cranny of themselves and their mean little inner lives. When one is in the throes of imagination, does it not make the blood rush, the senses heighten? The imagination is real in its own place and has a corresponding ghost-like, shadow-like realness here as well.

I wonder, does a robot feel real to itself?

But I digress. Perhaps I should say that Mr. Octopus exists beyond time/space and just leave it at that. And I describe him as sexy because everything I love, everything, is sexy. It’s the spirit that makes it so. The bark of this tree is so old and weathered and sexy, I want it inside me. I want inside it. Yes! Yes! Yes!

“Don’t mind herrr,” says Mr. Octopus. “She has a thing for treesss.”

This portion of taijimenez.com brought to you by Rubifoam for the TEETH. Put up by E. W. Hoyt & Co. LOWELL, MA.

All names, except dogs’, have been changed. Photo of mural by Cyrille Conan on Thwing St.

After teaching my evening class, I took Mr. Chulo, my four-legged friend, up to the park for his requisite second play. With the aid of the chucker (a sort of arm extension with a cup at the end that allows you to throw a ball really far) I hurled tennis balls off of his favorite lump of pudding stone with a force that greatly exceeded my natural ability. The chucker, when properly handled, can turn even the girliest throw into a rocket. To add to the excitement, pudding stone is jagged and uneven, so there was no way to predict where the ball would go. Fortunately, there were no windows nearby.

Mr. Chulo chased after each missile as though possessed, kicking up clouds of dirt in his wake. I marveled inwardly that I never ever got tired of watching him run. He’s a whippet, a smaller version of a greyhound, but not so small as an Italian greyhound.

He’s fast. Wicked fast as they say in Boston. But it’s not only his speed that captivates me. It is his conviction. No amount of uneven, rocky terrain can deter him from his goal, the ball, although to call catching the ball a goal is somewhat missing the mark. When he runs after the ball there is simply no separation. No him and it. When Mr. Chulo runs, he is oneness.

Anyway, after a good twenty minutes or so of this, Bob appeared. Not Disco Bob, but Lucy Bob. You see, at the park when there’s a redundancy of first names, we tend to place the dog’s name before the human’s as a sort of prefix. Lucy, an old heavy yellow lab, and Chulo ran a few circuits while Bob and I fell into conversation. I love these conversations with Bob because he’s, well, interesting: a former high school English teacher, musician, carpenter, former hippy-free-loving-polyandrist, history buff and who knows what else.

On this particular evening, we were discussing the history of Thwing Street, a dead-end street in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury that I happen to live on. The funny thing about living on a street named Thwing is that you have to repeat the name several times and spell it out before people believed that such a place exists. “Thwing Street did you say?” they ask incredulously. Yes, that’s it. And if you think that’s weird, check out the dude’s whole name.

“Drum rrroll, please,” says Mr. Octopus.

Ok, Mr. Thwing, for whom our street was named and who was engaged in the triangle business, involving rum, sugar cane and slaves, had a whopper of a name according to Bob. It was, get this,

SUPPLY CLAP THWING.

Now, as I stood there talking with Lucy’s Bob, the sun setting majestically over Boston, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of place it must have been way back in the 1800′s where a mother could name a son Supply Clap Thwing. What a world indeed.

While musing over this, another neighbor, Carmen, showed up. She’d lost her dog, Celeste, an albino boxer, months ago, and in her grief rarely made appearances in the park any more. But this evening, the tide seemed to turn just a little. She saw Mr. Chulo, who she calls Chalupa, in the park, and bravely ventured in. She threw the ball for him a few times and we chatted. I knew this was a big deal for her to be able to play with another dog without breaking down in tears.

On the way back home, another neighbor, Dave, was in the street helping Carmen unload her groceries. We hugged briefly. He’s a regular in our home on game night. He asked when the Celtics played next. It’s tomorrow night and we are, that is, Mr. Conan, is making lasagna. Come by!

As I left Dave and walked down the hill to our little spot on Supply Clap’s Thwing, I wondered if I had left Roxbury and stumbled into a parallel world of Make Believe until a fragrant cloud of pot smoke wafted oh so beguilingly past my nose. Nope, still in da hood. Nevertheless, I said out loud to the universe and whoever might be listening, “I love my neighborhood.”

I haven’t felt like I actually lived in a neighborhood with, uh, neighbors since I was a small child. Since then I had grown used to not knowing neighbor’s names and thought of them more as potentially hostile people to avoid. But the neighbor thing is nice. It makes me feel safe and gives me a sense of belonging, of connectedness and I have Mr. Chulo to thank for that. He’s changed my life. I used to be such a loner-hermit type but he has helped bring me into community. He has connected me to people because with him, I have to be outside, walking around, each and every day. You get to know people. You get to have conversations.

Seriously, real live conversations! When we are hanging out in the park with our dogs, sometimes for hours at a stretch with other semi-employed dog lovers, people rarely pull out their phones. We are genuinely interested in each other. We play frisbee. In this age of technology, when we are connected, yet alienated more than ever, these daily gatherings in the park are such simple medicine.

“You know, octopuses can also bring you into community. How ’bout a little credit here?” asks Mr. Octopus.

“Sure. Why not? If I can love my neighbors, any thing’s possible.”

“As an artist, you can only ever express who you are.”–Qasim Naqvi

*****

“Is Tilly, my maternal mother the one I am supposed to ancestralize?” I ask.

The shells are tossed and answer an emphatic yes. I am not surprised. She is the one on the other side I carry closest. 

It is believed in most traditional cultures that the relationship between the living and the dead is sacred and symbiotic, because essentially we are them. I’ve heard one woman say that we are simply ancestors in the flesh. Birth and death are two sides of the same coin: when we are born here, we die someplace else and vice versa (Malidoma Some). Just as there are people here, hopefully, waiting to receive us, there are those on the other side, hopefully, who mourn our loss. The tears we shed are like amnion for the dead.

The efforts of the living and the dead are essential to the success of a birth/death. Both side have responsibilities. One of ours is to help them transition to the ancestral realm, as they help us to transition during birth. I think it was in Malidoma’s biography Of Water and the Spirit where I read about how a child is born into the Dagara culture of Burkina Faso. Prior to the birth, a diviner consults the ancestor-waiting-to-be-born in order to determine its purpose in incarnating.

Now, many of us in modern culture are lost, searching for our purpose, melancholic and weighted down with the burden of our undelivered gifts. Can you imagine coming here and already knowing why you came? Can you imagine being named for your purpose so that you can’t forget it? Can you imagine that your community also understands your purpose and helps you fulfill it? To the western mind, this might feel like too much pressure and a lack of personal freedom, but traditional cultures are built on community. Your life is not simply yours alone and your purpose has to do with the well-being of all.

When the mother is ready to deliver, all of the children in the village gather around. As the baby’s head appears, the children start shrieking with delight and praise. Since children’s voices are the closest to the baby’s, this is a signal to the baby that they’ve arrived in the right place. It is hard for most westerners, born into cold, sterile hospitals, to imagine such a warm, beautiful, welcome. Reading this made me weep with a profound sense of loss.

Conversely, If one is not aided by the living in their death transition, well, things don’t go so good. Since modern culture has lost touch with the true essence of ritual and grief, the kind of grief “that,” as Martin Prechtel says, “makes you look bad when you’re done,”  the dead struggle, lost, purposeless on the other side. Outside of their rightful seat among the other ancestors, they are rendered powerless to help those they’ve left behind.

As above, so below. So, as a result of the improper send off of our loved-ones, well, their world and our world, which is one world, is in a creepy place. Maybe you’ve noticed. From an indigenous perspective, we cannot begin to heal the wounds of this world until we heal the connection with our ancestors. As Malidoma says, “anything we do here without the sanction of our ancestors will bear little fruit at an unbearable cost.”

All day and night, forty or so of us perform an elaborate ritual to help our deceased loved-ones cross over into the realm of the ancestors. As part of the ritual, we keep an all night vigil. Some of us gifted with sight can see their ghosts gathering around the fire as far as the eye can see. There are so many needing help. They have waited so long. At around 3am we consult the shells again to see if the ones the shells designated have made it.

“Has Tilly made it?”

“No.”

“Is there something else I need to do?“

“Yes.”

“Does she want to see me dance?”

“Yes.”

Great. This is the last thing I want to do. I am cold and tired, but I can’t say no to Tilly. We have come this far. I approach the fire and dance around jerkily. My mind is racing the whole time.  I’m sure this is the worst dance I’ve ever done and it’s in front of all these people. I want to give Tilly something beautiful and I’m sure I’ve failed.

The shells are consulted again. Has she made it? Yes. Well, at least my efforts were enough to get her there. Mission accomplished, but I cannot forgive myself for that awful galumphing gorilla dance. Suddenly I hear something inwardly that carries a jolt and I know I am plugged in:

THE PROBLEM IS NOT WITH DANCING. IT NEVER HAS BEEN. THE PROBLEM IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF.

Damn. Those ancestors are not wasting any time. I better hold onto my seatbelt: shattering of illusions straight ahead! The words take a minute to settle into my stomach. It’s so obvious now, so clear, I almost want to laugh. It’s one of those things that you can see in someone else, but can’t recognize from the inside.

I think back to the many years I suffered a contentious relationship with my dancing. It’s true that I often used dancing to punish myself. And then I turned around and blamed dancing and everyone in it, but it never hurt me. I hurt myself and tended to attract the energy of victimization.

Now I understand why I’ve been so blocked in renewing my life after retiring from dance: even though a new career or relationship might give me the illusion of moving forward, without this new understanding it would just be the same shit, new package. In order to move forward I would have to bring all parts of myself.

Of course this understanding, though hard, comes with a gift. Now, I can peel away another layer of healing. (I suspect this goes on forever).

“Besides, the whole tortured artist thing is so last century,” says Mr. Octopus.

Yeah. This is the age of enlightenment. You gotta get your shit together.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” says Mr. Ocotopus.

Sorry. I tend to belabor that point on this blog. It’s a process. Anyway, most people have to face retirement eventually, but dancers, like professional athletes, are confronted with that change in life earlier than others. The questions are daunting, like the dreaded “now what?” And the “who am I without the what I do?” and the “how fat am I gonna get?”

For the dancer/athlete, these questions tend to unfortunately coincide with the mid-life crisis, thereby causing a real spiritual double-whammy. Suddenly, this vast, open space lays before you. You feel alone, lost, and for most dancers, unlike our pro-athlete brethren, without the financial means to start a chain restaurant.

Also, probably like most, I was in a state of mourning and spiritually sick. My pain guided me to seek healing. But once I was more or less back on my feet, I still had to face the void, egads. Some vague notion of home flitted through my memory-bones. I looked to art. I looked to Africa. Something in the sound of the drum said yes to me in the places that hurt and I suspect that is true for us all.

Most recently, I picked up a drum and started to play. To my dismay, the rhythms of the mother-land did not flow effortlessly from my fingertips. Who did I think I was just because I have some Nigerian blood in me? There are no unearned advantages in life regardless of how things may appear. Not for the really hard stuff anyway, like loss or mastery for that matter.

So, here I am, a beginner again. It’s  not so bad. I like my new teacher and my husband comes to classes with me. We practice to the dismay of our neighbors. Sometimes in class, my teacher, knowing I am a dancer, will ask me to dance while he plays and I am honored to oblige. In those moments, dancing is in its right place, free from the stress, pressure and fear that I often performed under as a professional.

The teacher of this class, Wole Alade, is a spiritual being in his own right. He has shown me that the place I seek is inside of myself. I know that may sound like a spiritual platitude, or simply obvious, but it’s also easier said than done. How many of us can claim the home inside ourselves? How many of us can really sit in it and not be led astray by the seductive glamour of this world?

Looking back now,  I can see more clearly how our gift can be our greatest challenge, how our challenge can be our greatest gift, how our pain can be our salvation by pointing us in the right direction. Even the ego, that part of our humaness that so many teachers of spirituality disparage, has its role to play.

It is the very thing that brings validity to love.

Then I enter and let myself be guided. Getting lost is rather the point, though it is impractical when one has to pee and can’t find a bathroom. Plus I’m shy and afraid to ask the guards for directions. They look mean. Especially that big one on loan from Spofford. So, off I go, hunting for those universal bathroom signs with the triangle lady/rectangle man and their floaty round heads, when I  instead find myself not in the bathroom at all, but in the room of African artifacts. Goddamnit.

Oh, this is a clever trick of my unconscious (or something else) indeed, because I’ve been avoiding this room. This room is not like other “art” to me, to be viewed from my own, comfortable, self-indulgent perspective, basking in the reflected shimmer of oil paints or whatever.

I was unsure of how to approach it, but it was too late to turn back. They saw me. They’ve seen me every time I’ve come. What was I waiting for? With all due respect, little sister, you should have come to us first. Showing up in this room felt like being put on the spot to give a speech at a wedding. I was afraid of what to say, what I could possibly say, having nothing to say. I don’t know why I felt this way, but I did.

“You know exactly why,” says Mr. Octopus.

I received my little glass of the thick, dark liquid and drank. The ayahuasca worked its way through my system, taking a reading of me from the inside out. In a while, my solar plexus felt charged, on fire. I heard some African music (Ali Farka Toure’s “In the Heart of the Moon”) coming from the speakers on the other side of the room. I had to be near that music. It seemed to be calling me. I couldn’t stand, so I crawled to where the sound emanated. I wanted with all my being to touch this music. Oh, please, if I can just touch you, so beautiful.

Once I settled in by the speakers,  I felt a sudden unexpected rush of emotion. A kind of summary of slavery and colonialism tore through me. It was not like reading about these things from a textbook. It was like having pain rip through you, entering your back and out through your guts like a horde of hungry poltergeists. I was left drowning and screaming and crying on the floor, eviscerated. 

Then, through this music, I heard, with my inner ear, the warmest, kindest male voice “speaking” to me. I grew up without my father and have never known a father’s love until I heard this voice that I recognized as Father. With a love I cannot describe in earthly language, he said, “You are a daughter of Africa. Come home.” And I laid down in the amnion of my father’s music for a long, long time.

A classical music concert just started nearby. Late-comers rushed through the African room on their way in. I waited for the foot traffic to die down. Alone, finally, I spoke out loud to all the sacred vessels and to the spirits they served: I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t come here first during previous visits to the museum. I sometimes don’t know what to do with all the love I have for you. You remind me of my spiritual longing and it hurts. I am sorry that you were taken and neutralized behind glass, treated as dead artifacts instead of the sacred conduits for beings that are very much alive. I hope that someday you will be returned home.

I felt inwardly that my apology was received and that I was now free to move about the room. I found a photograph of a Fon altar dating from the mid 19th to early 20th century. The description of the photograph describes a central figure with a top hat and pipe and goes on to say, “The figure probably represents Yovogan, a special minister named by King Guezo (ruled 1818-1858) to oversee foreigners and trading houses in Ouidah.”

My inner-knowing perked its little head up like a hot turkey timer. I looked more closely. Hmmm. Very suspicious. I don’t think that’s a politician sitting up on that altar. I could be wrong, but in the top hat and pipe I recognize deities: Elegua to the Fon and Papa Legba to Haitians. It’s possible that Yovogan channeled Elegua in ritual, or even imitated his dress in public, but in any event, I’m convinced that the writers of this placard did not do their homework. So I write a little sign of my own (hee hee hee) that says “I am not Yovogan,” and affix it above the photograph with a piece of chewing gum. (Hee hee hee).

Next, I move to the Nigerian carved stone head, chewing gum at the ready. The placard reads that “this piece was perhaps intended to memorialize the dead.” From what I understand, traditional Africans would not memorialize their dead like we do here in the west. For them, the dead are not reduced to memory. They are alive in another realm and very much involved with us who are still embodied. So, I write another sign that says, “I am not a memorial” and stick it to the glass.

At this point, a guard enters the room with his walkie-talkie, talking. He sits down. Are they on to me? I flat-out ask him, harumph, if he’s watching me, curious as to why I’ve suddenly become so bold when a few minutes ago I was too shy to ask directions to the bathroom. Caught off guard, literally, he stumbles with his words and finally manages to confess that he’s just trying to get away from his boss! Hee hee hee.

Anyway, now under surveillance, I have to quit my chewing-gum shenanigans. I wander as unsuspiciously as possible back over to the cases. I wonder what it would be like to dance behind a ritual mask, to channel those spirits.

There is a Chokwe mask used to honor female ancestors. Do the Chokwe want their mask back? And the Makonde? Do they want their mask back? And the Dan and the Fang and the Vai? Who are these people? I have heard of the Goths, the Vikings, the Celts, the Basques, the Bretons and many other European groups, but these names are all new to me.

Hello. I hope to meet you someday soon.

I never did find that bathroom.

Since I stopped dancing full-time about four years ago, I have searched for a new place for myself. Teaching and choreographing have been invaluable experiences and have provided me with an income, but something’s missing there. Even when I danced, I had this awful “something missing” feeling constantly gnawing away at me. It’s just that being a professional dancer is so all-consuming that I was able to push that feeling to the back burner for a while. For years, actually.

But now that I am past that phase of my life, the gnawing has returned in full force. What is my purpose and where do I belong? I know this is a common enough question. I look around me and it seems that I am not alone. Many people feel unfulfilled on that level. But then, every once in a while, I encounter someone who is in their glow. In their dharma. And it shows. You see, I do believe we come here with an intention. This intention, this purpose, may have nothing to do with one’s career, but I have this notion that for me at least, my spirituality and my outward work want to align.

“Yes. It’s called a mid-life crrrisis,” says Mr. Octopus.

When searching for our purpose, great teachers like Malidoma Some and Joseph Campbell tell us to follow what we are naturally drawn to, or as Campbell puts it to “follow your bliss.” Well, see that’s the trouble. I spent so many years focusing on nothing but dancing, that I didn’t make room to do things I liked. And sadly, for many of those years, I didn’t even like dancing. I felt bound to it, but that is not the same as love. It was fueled with ambition, but that’s not love either.

I guess I loved it in a way, but it didn’t make me happy as it once did. There is a part of me hoping that I will one day rediscover my love for dancing and that thought brings tears to my eyes. When did it stop being my passion? I think it was the moment I stopped loving myself. I thought I had to sacrifice myself for it, but dancing never asked that of me. So, anyway, that’s all to say, I never had a hobby. I like to read, but that doesn’t really count. Or if it does, it’s not enough.

It sort of feels like when you break up from one of those terrible relationships with a domineering partner. After the relationship is over you go shopping by yourself and you keep asking what would so-and-so like? Then you realize that so-and-so’s opinion doesn’t matter anymore, but you don’t know what dress to pick because everything you’ve done for the past thirty years has been to please him!

“I am going to smack you,” says Mr. Octopus.

“No, no. I’m fine.”

“Then why are you crying? There, therrre, bups…you know, you may be deluded with all this destiny stuff, but I have to say, I admire your conviction. You just keep holding onto your little light.”

A very cool older gentleman that I met on retreat recently had an idea. He suggested I find a room of my own. A place where I can go, away from the distractions of home to just be. Just be with my stuff. Just listen. I took this request to my ancestor altar and followed up by asking several artist friends about renting studio space. I even asked a neighbor if I could rent out a room in her empty apartment until she found tenants. None of these leads worked out and truth be told, I cannot afford another two hundred bucks a month for a listening space.

I was just about to give up on my search when my future in-laws showed up for a visit. We all went to the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston. Now, Mr. Conan-future-husband is an artist himself and when he goes to the museum, he goes with an agenda. Also, as a natural pack leader, he is not open to me staying behind and catching up with everyone later. The pack has to stay together. Fine. It’s his thing.

Actually, his attitude was a gift. While being dragged through the modern art wing by my retinas, I made mental notes to myself of all the things I wanted to look at more closely during another visit. I imagined that I would return alone and just wander around and that’s exactly what I did.

The museum is open several nights a week until 9:45 pm. Except for the occasional tours, which are easily avoided, or the couple out on a date, it is easy to get lost in galleries and have long quiet moments to myself. Also, check it out, Mr. Conan works as an installer at several museums throughout the city so I can go as often as I want for free!

So I go. I roam for hours. I take my shoes off and sit down and let myself be washed with beauty. And I suddenly realize, I have found my listening room. I remember as a child, I would sit and pour over my mother’s art books for hours like this. I would place myself inside the painting. Sometimes I do that (John Singer Sergeant “A Capriote” 1878). Or sometimes I really get into the story (Winslow Homer “The Fog Warning” 1885: A lone fisherman in a tiny rowboat in rough waters. Will he make it home? He’s looking over his shoulder at the fog rolling in. He must be a strong fella. Two big fish in his boat, probably cod, etc.).

I don’t know if being the crazy lady at the museum is my destiny, but I found something to love, and that’s enough for now.