Once when I said—as I have been known to do—that a fun game we could play sometime would be performing small acting lines for each other as earnestly as we could. This time the group said, Ok we’re in, let’s have you do that right now. I should have seen this coming but I still found it in myself to be surprised. Maybe I even felt pressured. I’m so dramatic.
“I didn’t know.” That’s the line they gave me. I would perform it three different ways as earnestly as I could. I don’t think they expected much; I do think I overdelivered. This story would be told at breakfast two years later, maybe it was day 88 of this cross-crountry trip, and I would again be invited to perform the line.
So again I would bow my head, see how far I could travel in ~5 seconds down the corridors of experience, grief, longing, confusion and allow them back up to present their mixture on my face as I delivered the line as earnestly as possible. Whenever I go fully earnest, I find that it surprises people.
I’m 96 days into quitting my job and driving across the country exploring therapeutic dance, and I didn’t know.
And the thing is I’m so committed to saying yes, and even though I say it gets easier, I’m not sure it does. I certainly believe, or have decided, that when invited—I will dance… play some improvisational game… flirt with the world in front of me as if I’m worthy.
Here’s the map of the stops on this journey so far.
Maybe it’s unkind to the eyes finding these words looking for any type of inspiration and finding me about to mention my back pain.
My back’s been hurting. So many days are full of inspiration and this one I feel compelled to sit quietly in this coffee shop and write this nonsense.
I look back on this journey and think “I didn’t know” — what it would be like—not that I thought I knew either. I suppose I knew I didn’t know, and felt called to hold uncertainty daily so as for things to emerge from over a horizon no longer obscured by a dense cloud of familiar thoughts and concerns. allowing some change, allowing the story to develop in new ways.
I seem to have fallen into a bit of a pattern bouncing back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco in the most recent days… and though I pretty regularly spend time creating, dancing, researching… it’s been a while since I got to go that deep, and longer still since I’ve dreamed of what happens on the other side of a cross-country roadtrip with my sister to family in NC for the holidays, and then a few weeks in the area with my niece.
Incredible things have happened in these 96 days. I’ve danced a lot, a primary goal. Cried a good number of times, clogged a toilet in Santa Fe, and practiced ways of being that feel good whenever possible.
Overall, though not today, it feels like it’s going really well. I feel again and again on the perimeter of what I’ve known, seeing not so far any place of arrival, and much more Zelda at the beginning of a journey (listening now). I remember listening to this soundtrack in a field outside of Durham, NC when I was there for ~9 months. A TikTok said people with ADHD benefit from aligning what they’re reading with what they’re listening to. No big breakthroughs but it was nice. And here I now am on the other side of the country, listening again.
Nobody buys Zelda excited to be delivered a final, completed character.
Right? It seems like while in society we idolize wisdom, and intellectual dominance… and maybe similar to Zelda… we run the footpath in front of us toward the mountain range, obstacle, and challenges.
And still, we buy the game to start from scratch. Perhaps a minimal idea of dress, no weapons yet, and a lot of walking to get anywhere at all in the first few minutes of game play. Maybe a few introduction pop ups.
Assuming you don’t have a Zelda controller in your hand at this moment, isn’t it easy to think about now? A Romantic lens of the beginning of the game. The value and getting to be there and play it yourself and see how you do, how far you can get.
*pop up appears: This is your satchel, you can store things you find and utilize them whenever you need (up to 12 items)* In the game, most don’t obsess of the satchel, how many things it has, what we should have grabbed, or not use, we accept this small economy at our hip with momentary consideration but we keep moving toward the target in front of us.
Maybe much of the journey so far has been getting to this beginning of game moment, minimally packed satchel moment.
My plan is to continue exploring intuitively, from Yurts to dance in to university libraries available to the public (Gonzaga’s is amazing), interviews, dance retreats, and opening to moments where offering therapeutic dance/movement facilitation could be helpful to the moment.
Maybe by February I’ll be heading to Santa Fe to home base there for 3 months and start Somatic Experiencing training. Maybe I stay in Durham longer and focus on healing my back.
For now, I didn’t know. and I don’t know.
I’m right where I want to be. 🧝
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