how many lives have you yearned
serene and searing
how many lives have I fled
your fanged beauty…
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Finally, I can stop smiling
and own my frowning caprice.
Ignored my most, I bask
in the poetry of my invisibility…
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is Body’s Dance…
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How do I breathe in these times?
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I have been exploring the theme of sacrifice (Yagna) in my book-writing project. Sacrifice, like everything else in an invocatory philosophy, is multi-dimensional. It is intimate and subjective in this context, and often invisible and overlooked by the values of the mundane world.
The poem is a reflection of some revelations that emerge from my dance inquiry into Yagna, which is what renders dance as invocation.
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In invocatory dance, memory must be relinquished as the preparatory "sacrifice" of the past and the known. It is in this "loss" of memory that dance is birthed.
In Rasa Dance, the archetypal invocation of "loss" of memory is called "Apasmara". This poem is inspired by the dance of Apasmara.
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This is a tribute to the tribe of kangaroos that nearly ambushed me on my mountain walk!
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Read MoreIn archetypal invocations, home, like everything else in the mundane world, takes on many nuances. A home is not a pre-created space into which we simply step. It must be fashioned with exertion, discernment, and passion. It is, like everything else in the archetypal world, a multi-dimensional constellation that must be invoked into existence.
Read MoreAs I was exploring the notion of home as being at home with one’s own essence, Rasa or authenticity, I found I had to contend with the fear of not being needed.
All our meaning making narratives of life are about purpose, and about being in service to others. This assumes we must have expressions that are useful to others or that subscribe to values proposed as important. For an artist or a creative, this can be suffocating. Creativity is the outcast domain, that which may not be “useful” because it moves outside the known and the inherited. In the Natya Shastra it states that dance transforms “shuddha” (the purity of linear narratives) into “chitra” (diverse or multitudinous). Dance alchemises the most obvious possibility into the mystery of infinite possibilities.
The dance that emerged as I explored this proposition was the Rasa of forgetting and being forgotten. I will write more about this Rasa at another time. Here I am sharing the poem that emerged from this exploration of relinquishing the desire to be needed.