We were on the Stanford campus, in a small room that used to be a nursery school classroom. Most of the people standing around were friends of the band or friends of friends. The female lead singer sang in Turkish but even if I understood Turkish, I doubt I could have made out the lyrics over the boy band’s driving rock beat. From the first chords, my body was in motion. After all, what else is live music, especially live rock and roll, for but to dance to? I looked around at the other people in the room, most of them a decade or two younger than me, as they stood, some swaying to the beat, others stock still. A few took pictures. It was as though they were watching a symphony concert or a televised event.
I had a sense of déjà vu to the Death Cab for Cutie concert I had attended a couple of summers earlier at the outdoor Greek Theatre in Berkeley. There, the number of people over 40 totaled about six, and I was perhaps the only one who wasn’t escorting a gaggle of teenaged children. The crowd was enthusiastic, cheering wildly after each song, singing along with some, but they seemed locked in their heads, or locked out of their bodies. I simply couldn’t fathom how they could just stand there so passively, with only the slightest movement. Were they all so afraid of being noticed? Of doing something other than what the rest of their peers were doing?
It reminded me of another concert I’d gone to a decade earlier in Boston. Roxette, a Swedish rock band, was performing in a small downtown theatre. Most of the audience, including my then-husband and I, were sitting in our seats, tapping our feet or moving our shoulders. Finally, the female singer, Marie Fredericksson, her voice admitting a tiniest bit of frustration, called out to the audience, “Do you wanna dance?” “Yes,” they responded. “Well then you have to stand up and move,” she said, giving us permission to stand in the narrow aisle and dance.
One definite advantage of being older is that I, for one, no longer care what the anonymous “they” think about me. If I want to dance, then I’m going to dance. I’ve always loved dancing, but when I was younger I was too self-conscious, too afraid of other people’s opinions to move to the music, especially without a partner. My husband was even more self-conscious, so for years, I sat on the sidelines, tapping my feet, wishing that I could move body and soul to the beat.
No wonder I felt as though I’d come home the very first time I attended a 5Rhythms class three years ago. I didn’t have to wait for someone to ask me to dance, didn't have to dance with anyone, although I could if we both wanted to. It was just me and the music, but it was also me moving in community. A community of like-minded souls. Finally, I had found my tribe, the dance tribe. Whenever I join a 5 Rhythms class, whether my weekly local or a workshop or a class in another city, in fact, whenever I attend any kind of free-form ecstatic dance class, be it contact improvisation or Soul Motion or Biodanza, I have that sense of connecting with my tribe, that sense of coming home.
But the practice of ecstatic dance was brought me far more than community. It has helped me to know myself on a deeper level, to connect with my emotions and let them flow through me with the movement and the music. Not only have I experienced deep connection with one person and with a whole roomful of people, I have healed deep pain, released deep grief and rage, and expressed deep joy. I have found a level of energy, vitality and stamina that belie my age, that I simply didn’t possess when I was young. And so tonight, when the band started playing, I dropped into my center, let go of any self-consciousness or fears of being judged, and moved to the music, blissfully riding the waves of sound to ecstasy.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Travels to Another Planet
Two weeks into my sojourn in northern New Mexico, I was having an over-priced plate of blue cornmeal calamari and a prickly pear margarita at the Anaconda Bar, while listening to live country music and watching couples do the two-step. In my all-black garb, sitting alone with my travel notebook, a overwhelming sense of being an outsider washed over me. I felt like a foreign correspondent just off the plane from, say, London or San Francisco, or maybe another planet, assigned to report on local color.
The next morning, when I mentioned my culture shock to friends at my favorite café, Dave the owner piped up with, “You are on another planet. Welcome to New Mexico.”
At the time, I attributed my feeling of alienation to having been snowed in at a friend’s place in Santa Fe one night, followed by being snowed out of the place I was staying in Nambé the next, caught without a change of clothing, but fortunately with my pug dog and laptop in tow.
But now that I’ve returned to “Californicate,” as they call it, I feel torn between a desire to return to the enchanted vistas of New Mexico, where I was incredibly productive, and the sense that I’ve woken up from a dream into my real life.
In the three weeks I spent in New Mexico, I felt like I connected with more than half a dozen people on a more than superficial level. I signed my first gallery contract for 10 pieces of art that I produced during that visit. I got more writing down than in any other equivalent period of time. I even had that strange but flattering feeling when locals assume that you are one of them, And perhaps because I was not a local, a window opened for me into another world, or should I say worlds.
Taos is country town, where everyone has a truck to deal with the rutted dirt roads, a town where poverty is apparent in the multitude of trailer homes, and wealth in the plethora of art galleries. A town full of singles at the base of ski destination Taos mountain, a heart chakra mountain of whom people say, Move to Taos, lose a spouse A place that is said to be a karmic accelerator, where the newcomer quickly sees both the up and the down sides of small town living, where people’s characters are quickly revealed, both their weaknesses and their strengths. A town where the Anglos are the newcomers, the Hispanics the landed gentry, and the Native Americans have been living for 1200 years in the oldest continually-inhabited settlement in the United States. A town that is home to healers, artists, ski bums, vets, tourists and outlaws.
Maybe it was just dumb luck that I found a café with free wireless to work in, potential friends to socialize with, good food to eat, art supplies that inspired me, a gallery owner who was moved by my work, and three offers of places to stay when I return. Maybe I could not keep up that level of output, or find that level of support and inspiration if I had the distractions of my everyday life to deal with. Maybe the small town gossiping, the country-western music, the dramatic weather, or the mountain herself would push me away if I tried to stay longer.
One of my last days in Taos, I had my tarot cards read. The reading was entirely positive, filled with abundance, not only of money but also of love, all kinds, including a dharma mate to share my life’s purpose with. When I specifically asked if I should move to Taos, the psychic replied, enigmatically, “There is an opening for you here, but you have free will.”
Maybe it was all a dream. And yet, after having my karma accelerated and my heart opened, I’m now back in Silicon Valley, which seems more banal and plastic, in a social environment where my connections feel more tenuous and shallow than I remember—and I’m no longer sure that this is home.
So, the question for this big city girl, who thrives on the diversity of the Bay Area and having friends who are brilliant, who loves redwoods and fancy restaurants, who wants to be a fulltime artist but also would like to someday own her own home, is whether moving to Taos is a good bet or just a fantasy, a really bad idea or only one of many possibilities? For now, I’m waiting for the answer and living with the question.
The next morning, when I mentioned my culture shock to friends at my favorite café, Dave the owner piped up with, “You are on another planet. Welcome to New Mexico.”
At the time, I attributed my feeling of alienation to having been snowed in at a friend’s place in Santa Fe one night, followed by being snowed out of the place I was staying in Nambé the next, caught without a change of clothing, but fortunately with my pug dog and laptop in tow.
But now that I’ve returned to “Californicate,” as they call it, I feel torn between a desire to return to the enchanted vistas of New Mexico, where I was incredibly productive, and the sense that I’ve woken up from a dream into my real life.
In the three weeks I spent in New Mexico, I felt like I connected with more than half a dozen people on a more than superficial level. I signed my first gallery contract for 10 pieces of art that I produced during that visit. I got more writing down than in any other equivalent period of time. I even had that strange but flattering feeling when locals assume that you are one of them, And perhaps because I was not a local, a window opened for me into another world, or should I say worlds.
Taos is country town, where everyone has a truck to deal with the rutted dirt roads, a town where poverty is apparent in the multitude of trailer homes, and wealth in the plethora of art galleries. A town full of singles at the base of ski destination Taos mountain, a heart chakra mountain of whom people say, Move to Taos, lose a spouse A place that is said to be a karmic accelerator, where the newcomer quickly sees both the up and the down sides of small town living, where people’s characters are quickly revealed, both their weaknesses and their strengths. A town where the Anglos are the newcomers, the Hispanics the landed gentry, and the Native Americans have been living for 1200 years in the oldest continually-inhabited settlement in the United States. A town that is home to healers, artists, ski bums, vets, tourists and outlaws.
Maybe it was just dumb luck that I found a café with free wireless to work in, potential friends to socialize with, good food to eat, art supplies that inspired me, a gallery owner who was moved by my work, and three offers of places to stay when I return. Maybe I could not keep up that level of output, or find that level of support and inspiration if I had the distractions of my everyday life to deal with. Maybe the small town gossiping, the country-western music, the dramatic weather, or the mountain herself would push me away if I tried to stay longer.
One of my last days in Taos, I had my tarot cards read. The reading was entirely positive, filled with abundance, not only of money but also of love, all kinds, including a dharma mate to share my life’s purpose with. When I specifically asked if I should move to Taos, the psychic replied, enigmatically, “There is an opening for you here, but you have free will.”
Maybe it was all a dream. And yet, after having my karma accelerated and my heart opened, I’m now back in Silicon Valley, which seems more banal and plastic, in a social environment where my connections feel more tenuous and shallow than I remember—and I’m no longer sure that this is home.
So, the question for this big city girl, who thrives on the diversity of the Bay Area and having friends who are brilliant, who loves redwoods and fancy restaurants, who wants to be a fulltime artist but also would like to someday own her own home, is whether moving to Taos is a good bet or just a fantasy, a really bad idea or only one of many possibilities? For now, I’m waiting for the answer and living with the question.
Not Ready for Prime Time
My trepidation about visiting China began when I went to the consulate in San Francisco to apply for a visa.
I hadn’t planned to go to China at all this spring; in fact, the only reason that China came up as a possibility was that Air China is a Star Alliance partner with United Airlines and I was using my accumulated United miles to get to my main destination, the island of Bali, in Indonesia. When the United agent suggested routing my journey through Beijing, with a layover on the way home, I thought, Why not?
I drove up to the consulate on a rainy Wednesday in early February, only to find it closed for Chinese New Year. The following Tuesday, I drove up again and this time found the Consulate open for business. I walked past the handful of people protesting the government’s treatment of the Falun Gong group, stepped inside, took a number and an application and sat down to wait. When my number was called, shortly before the office closed for lunch, I headed to the appropriate window and slid my application over the transom.
“Do you have a letter from your employer?” the clerk asked, to my surprise. I had given my occupation as writer/teacher.
“No, I’m not employed right now. I work as a contract teacher, but I’m on sabbatical now,” I explained.
“What kind of writing do you do?”
“I write about travel and food,” I replied, and wrote the address of my website on the margin of the application.
The clerk called a supervisor over.
“Do you write about politics?” the other woman asked.
“No, nothing political,” I answered. She hadn’t defined what she meant by political and I decided that my pieces on the environment didn’t fall into the same sensitive category as, say, human rights or Tibet.
“There was a woman who said she wrote cookbooks, but she was arrested,” the supervisor said, giving the impression that the woman had lied. “You’re welcome to visit China as a guest but nothing political.”
By this time, I was wondering why I hadn’t given my occupation as artist or English teacher, which would also have been true, rather than writer. I came back the next day and picked up my visa, which the clerk affixed to my passport with no further adieu. Ironically, I had had no intention of writing anything political about China, or even of writing anything at all about China, but with the supervisor’s grilling and veiled threat, I had essentially been handed something to write about.
It was March 26 when I arrived at the newly opened Terminal 3 in Beijing for a three-hour layover on my way to Bali. I followed the signs for transit passengers and stopped at the immigration desk, behind which was a young woman. I was her only customer, but she looked around for help, as though she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she examined my passport and visa, stamped the visa and waved me through.
The airport terminal was enormous, obviously expensive, and virtually empty. There were a few shops selling handicrafts, or Olympic souvenirs, or the usual multinational duty-free perfume/cigarettes/alcohol. I found a restaurant serving Italian food; to my surprise, the banana split arrived before the pasta. There were gaggles of young, uniformed Chinese employees, but not nearly enough customers to keep them busy. Their command of English was minimal, like that of the Air China flight attendants. For example, on the flight, the two attendants in my vicinity were able to ask if I would like fruits with cheese, but neither could understand nor answer an expected follow-up question, “What kind of fruits?” ) I wondered if this was deliberate; it certainly would prevent the Chinese from answering any question the government might deem political.
Fast forward nearly three weeks. I was nervous about my return trip through Beijing. So nervous that I only booked the hotel a couple of nights before and had made no plans of what to do or see during my 40 hours there, beyond a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. I chose the hotel based on a description in a magazine, DestinAsian, which I found on Bali. The Emperor was described as a newly-opened boutique hotel whose rooftop bar offered a view of the Forbidden City (and indeed, this was one of the highlights of the hotel.) I had had mixed experiences at boutique hotels in the past, most recently in Cairo, but I’m a sucker for cool design (witness my loyalty to Apple Computers). My room at the Emperor was on the turquoise floor and the room was done entirely in white and turquoise, which happens to be my favorite color. Unfortunately the service was not quite up to the same level as the interior design. For example, when I arrived at the hotel at 1 in the morning, it took 30 minutes to check in, despite the fact that there were two clerks and I was their only arriving guest. Leading me to my room, one of the young clerks said, somewhat dejectedly, “I guess you don’t want to play the game.” Instead of room numbers, the hotel uses names of emperors and arriving guests apparently can make a game of finding the room whose name matches that on their key card. “No, I’m too tired to play a game,” I muttered.
The next morning, the staff apologized for the check-in delay. After a prodigious breakfast that included sliced fruits served on a mirror, I asked about getting a taxi to the Great Wall. “You don’t have enough time to see the wall today, I think. They’re repairing the causeway and it will take you more than one hour, maybe more than two hours, to get there. I think you should see the Forbidden City today. You will have to come back to see the Great Wall. Two days is not enough time to see all of the things to see in Beijing,” the young employee insisted. I acquiesced to his suggestion, but now I wish I had braved the traffic to see the Great Wall, even if it took two hours to get there, which, after all, is considerably shorter than the amount of time I spent flying to get to Beijing in the first place.
So off I went to the Forbidden City. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the North Gate, a young woman came up to me, offering a tour in English. She was a Beijing native and had a wealth of information at her fingertips. When I expressed an interest in learning more about the Empress Cixi, she tailored the tour, pointing out the places where Cixi had lived and ruled. At the end of a couple of hours, she introduced me to a friend of hers, a rickshaw driver, for a tour of the Hutongs, a nearby area of old, one-story houses built around courtyards.
Interestingly, these rickshaw drivers were far more willing to transport a foreigner than the taxi drivers who either wouldn’t stop at all or who had trouble following the bilingual map on the hotel’s business card. Indeed, whenever I stopped a local and asked for help with my bilingual map, at least half the time I could expect the person to wave their hand, dismissing me. Was their reaction because I was a foreigner or because they didn’t want to deal with the language barrier? Recalling the days, not that long ago, when Chinese who spoke to foreigners would be interrogated by the police, I wondered how the government could expect its cautious citizenry to suddenly be open and friendly to the foreign tourists in their midst. Maybe during the actual days of the Olympics, the situation will be different, but I was left with the feeling that Beijing, and her people, are not yet ready for prime time.
I hadn’t planned to go to China at all this spring; in fact, the only reason that China came up as a possibility was that Air China is a Star Alliance partner with United Airlines and I was using my accumulated United miles to get to my main destination, the island of Bali, in Indonesia. When the United agent suggested routing my journey through Beijing, with a layover on the way home, I thought, Why not?
I drove up to the consulate on a rainy Wednesday in early February, only to find it closed for Chinese New Year. The following Tuesday, I drove up again and this time found the Consulate open for business. I walked past the handful of people protesting the government’s treatment of the Falun Gong group, stepped inside, took a number and an application and sat down to wait. When my number was called, shortly before the office closed for lunch, I headed to the appropriate window and slid my application over the transom.
“Do you have a letter from your employer?” the clerk asked, to my surprise. I had given my occupation as writer/teacher.
“No, I’m not employed right now. I work as a contract teacher, but I’m on sabbatical now,” I explained.
“What kind of writing do you do?”
“I write about travel and food,” I replied, and wrote the address of my website on the margin of the application.
The clerk called a supervisor over.
“Do you write about politics?” the other woman asked.
“No, nothing political,” I answered. She hadn’t defined what she meant by political and I decided that my pieces on the environment didn’t fall into the same sensitive category as, say, human rights or Tibet.
“There was a woman who said she wrote cookbooks, but she was arrested,” the supervisor said, giving the impression that the woman had lied. “You’re welcome to visit China as a guest but nothing political.”
By this time, I was wondering why I hadn’t given my occupation as artist or English teacher, which would also have been true, rather than writer. I came back the next day and picked up my visa, which the clerk affixed to my passport with no further adieu. Ironically, I had had no intention of writing anything political about China, or even of writing anything at all about China, but with the supervisor’s grilling and veiled threat, I had essentially been handed something to write about.
It was March 26 when I arrived at the newly opened Terminal 3 in Beijing for a three-hour layover on my way to Bali. I followed the signs for transit passengers and stopped at the immigration desk, behind which was a young woman. I was her only customer, but she looked around for help, as though she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she examined my passport and visa, stamped the visa and waved me through.
The airport terminal was enormous, obviously expensive, and virtually empty. There were a few shops selling handicrafts, or Olympic souvenirs, or the usual multinational duty-free perfume/cigarettes/alcohol. I found a restaurant serving Italian food; to my surprise, the banana split arrived before the pasta. There were gaggles of young, uniformed Chinese employees, but not nearly enough customers to keep them busy. Their command of English was minimal, like that of the Air China flight attendants. For example, on the flight, the two attendants in my vicinity were able to ask if I would like fruits with cheese, but neither could understand nor answer an expected follow-up question, “What kind of fruits?” ) I wondered if this was deliberate; it certainly would prevent the Chinese from answering any question the government might deem political.
Fast forward nearly three weeks. I was nervous about my return trip through Beijing. So nervous that I only booked the hotel a couple of nights before and had made no plans of what to do or see during my 40 hours there, beyond a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. I chose the hotel based on a description in a magazine, DestinAsian, which I found on Bali. The Emperor was described as a newly-opened boutique hotel whose rooftop bar offered a view of the Forbidden City (and indeed, this was one of the highlights of the hotel.) I had had mixed experiences at boutique hotels in the past, most recently in Cairo, but I’m a sucker for cool design (witness my loyalty to Apple Computers). My room at the Emperor was on the turquoise floor and the room was done entirely in white and turquoise, which happens to be my favorite color. Unfortunately the service was not quite up to the same level as the interior design. For example, when I arrived at the hotel at 1 in the morning, it took 30 minutes to check in, despite the fact that there were two clerks and I was their only arriving guest. Leading me to my room, one of the young clerks said, somewhat dejectedly, “I guess you don’t want to play the game.” Instead of room numbers, the hotel uses names of emperors and arriving guests apparently can make a game of finding the room whose name matches that on their key card. “No, I’m too tired to play a game,” I muttered.
The next morning, the staff apologized for the check-in delay. After a prodigious breakfast that included sliced fruits served on a mirror, I asked about getting a taxi to the Great Wall. “You don’t have enough time to see the wall today, I think. They’re repairing the causeway and it will take you more than one hour, maybe more than two hours, to get there. I think you should see the Forbidden City today. You will have to come back to see the Great Wall. Two days is not enough time to see all of the things to see in Beijing,” the young employee insisted. I acquiesced to his suggestion, but now I wish I had braved the traffic to see the Great Wall, even if it took two hours to get there, which, after all, is considerably shorter than the amount of time I spent flying to get to Beijing in the first place.
So off I went to the Forbidden City. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the North Gate, a young woman came up to me, offering a tour in English. She was a Beijing native and had a wealth of information at her fingertips. When I expressed an interest in learning more about the Empress Cixi, she tailored the tour, pointing out the places where Cixi had lived and ruled. At the end of a couple of hours, she introduced me to a friend of hers, a rickshaw driver, for a tour of the Hutongs, a nearby area of old, one-story houses built around courtyards.
Interestingly, these rickshaw drivers were far more willing to transport a foreigner than the taxi drivers who either wouldn’t stop at all or who had trouble following the bilingual map on the hotel’s business card. Indeed, whenever I stopped a local and asked for help with my bilingual map, at least half the time I could expect the person to wave their hand, dismissing me. Was their reaction because I was a foreigner or because they didn’t want to deal with the language barrier? Recalling the days, not that long ago, when Chinese who spoke to foreigners would be interrogated by the police, I wondered how the government could expect its cautious citizenry to suddenly be open and friendly to the foreign tourists in their midst. Maybe during the actual days of the Olympics, the situation will be different, but I was left with the feeling that Beijing, and her people, are not yet ready for prime time.
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