Consider the uses of adversity and know that they are timely.

2 quotes from somewhere mixed in with the blues.

Color them neon.

Shock them white.

And when you’re through releasing that…

Go fly a kite…

one with an icicle tail exhaling its mother

another, lousy at stringing someone along.

Hanalei. Choose Paper less. Choose Simplicity.

This is my song.

I saw that Ener-g had changed that lens, and before I knew it, I was following along.

I came to the photo of her healing hands and felt the energy coming off it. I stated an intention silently as I connected to something that had at times felt like I had a pinched nerve and had a wooden crutch under my armpit on my left side.

I thought that I’d like to receive more help with that. As I gazed at the photo, I felt that my arm was in a sling and saw a hazy picture of it in my mind’s eye. I also heard, “now move it to the right side.”

I started to shift it then thought–it’s a release of some kind.

“Expelliarmus! Magnetize this energy out!”

The left pinched area felt a bit lighter.

I saw in my mind a sling and then noticed that the sling held my right side as well as though by pulling up on points on the top of my body midway between my neck and shoulder.

The feeling in me was that whatever was there being pulled up was much lighter than on the left.

I recognized the visual of the sling as the kind that a stork carries a new baby in. Since I’m not pregnant and am not planning to be, I knew it was symbolic, a metaphor for giving birth to something. But what?

I wondered, Is it this story, fable, adventure? Or is it something else? The rebirth of A Place4Us?

If you who are reading take the metaphor of APlace4Us and allow it to enlarge in your imagination, what happens? What is APlace4Us for you? Where is it? And is it one location, many, the earth?

Breathe. Grow. Blossom.

Merlin's Tabard - fiber wearable by M.A. Stinson

And return,
as the adventure continues.

The POFFF Master/ Weaver of Yarns

I returned to the link today for some strange reason associated with writing up presentations for schools, conferences, libraries and the like as a writer, artist, dancer and professional weaver of yarns. It is also associated in my intensely jammed full and creative mind with exploring the links between fantasy and science or everyday life options. If you do this like I do, you read books like Life Colors by Pamala Oslie and Energy Medicine by Donna Eden, while remaining a fan of Chris Crutcher, Madeleine L’Engle, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Alice Hoffman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey and others. You probably also love oracle decks like Brian Froud‘s funky fairy oracle, or the Animal Medicine cards. I hope to receive the Hawaiian deck that contains red-footed booby birds because I love mystic flora and fauna as much as real ones, if you get my drift. And no, I’m not lost in a snow drift although a friend once fell into one as a child and was buried up to his neck. We got him out, though. (this is called going off on a tangent, but it might also be a road less travelled.)

But coming back online here with this, in my exploring I came to the words, “Inspiration Channel Attunement,” and thought, “What? What’s that?” I found those words together on another link with commas between them.

Now, I feel I’m definitely here to inspire as I continue to shift from a workaholic 9-5 jobber to something else, but what caught my attention was that this came in meaningwise to me as though I could give this kind of attunement or activation. Energy practitioners often pass on knowledge to students in this way. I suppose it’s similar to being a mind-melder, ballet teacher, or urban shaman. You absorb, glean, and reverberate in all parts of yourself with what you’re studying and becoming, and your teacher helps you attune, acclimate and assimilate.

For me, “channel” has two meanings, however. I channel energy and ideas, but I also am on a channel or frequency, like a T.V. station, and it is one that behaves as a radio transmission tower. It emits musical theater songs and dance, and tunes of joy and love, plus fairytales and storytelling (using metaphors, archetypes, etc.) bird sounds and waves of bliss.

It’s fun to discover analogies about oneself and see what ancient cultures thought. But I’d like to engage some of you right now both energetically and creatively.

What could I do for you in an Inspiration Channel Attunement, or as an Inspiration Channel for your own form of wavespell? (which sounds an awful lot like my urban fantasy novel, Jones, that I’d like Alex Etel to play the lead in before he’s past the age for it, along with someone yummy and ageless for the extraordinary being, L).

Those of you who resonate with attunements, what kind of Attunement would an Inspiration Channel Attunement be for you? Of course I thought Reiki right off the bat, and I am a Usui Reiki master teacher, who loves Fairy Nature Realms Reiki at the moment, of which I am also a master and teacher, but there are other kinds of Reiki and energies besides these.

What comes to you about this? And if you’d like more links to have your own kind of fun with this “game,” I’ve dropped some in below. I can’t speak for them as I have not yet visited them. There seems to be a lot to know about dreamspells and the Mayan point of view on time. I hope to visit some of these links myself little by little as I feel “called.”

Happy Galactic travels, odysseys, and dreamtime quests!

The POFFF Master/Weaver of Yarns

Dreamspell Links

Planetary Art Network

http://www.tortuga.com

2012: Dire Gnosis

http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk

13 Moons of Peace

http://www.13moon.com

The Galactic Hardware Store

http://www.galactichardwarestore.com/

Dream of Peace Network

http://www.dreamofpeace.net/

Dreamspell Portal

http://www.dreamspellportal.net/

Don’t forget to comment!

If you’re a Tweep, Twitterer or Facebook type and would rather comment on there about this, please drop me a line or friend me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, but if I’m playing with moonbeams, eating stone soup, or weaving some galactic yarn, it might not be an immediate response, so I hope you understand.

follow me at http://twitter.com/aplace4us
reply on the web at http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/aplace4us

http://www.facebook.com/melanieastinson#

Subscribe to APLACE4US

Sometimes you need to stay and focus awhile on one image or one sound or one aspect of nature to receive its gifts

Numero Uno. Relaxation – It’s the gateway to awareness. Ahhhh.

Number Two. You can get that here free, but it usually feels better to receive it through physical contact. That means massage, Reiki, healing touch, breathwork, energy work like CCT – Crystalline Consciousness Technique, hugging your children (if you have them), and giving members of your family and your good friends opportunities to receive sessions that offer professional touch as gifts.

Look for deals in the Toledo area HERE

Please leave comments so others will know this is the place to BE, explore, learn and more–virtually Free.

Third and final in this series…

When I noticed seagulls wafting around me, able to ride the winds around South Street Seaport, I didn’t know they had a specific message for me. It became stronger when the seagull from my earlier post planted himself before me. But it wasn’t until I returned to the friend’s apartment where I was staying that I really received clarification. My friend held the New York Times in her hands in which there was a rave review of Chekhov’s The Seagull, in which Kristin Scott Thomas played the older actress mother who needed all the attention focused on her.

Well, from all the seagulls of that morning, I knew I needed to investigate that piece of theater to see what it had to say to me, and so I set off to purchase tickets. We ended up in the balcony.

Several things struck me about the play: the red wounds on the hands of the young aspiring actress who played “the seagull” in the play within the play, which were like crucifixion wounds but also like the three red spots on the sparrow, the song sparrow coming to mind; the young playwright played by Mackenzie Crook as Treplev, calling in wild creatures as though they could heal what ailed those times.

I also managed to hear the Chekov insight about the need for new forms, and the identification within the play of the young actress as the seagull, who comes out ruffled and weathered but still alive at the end. Lastly, I became aware that no one in that play was happy, with themselves or with others. They simply “made do,” and in making do, playing “Lotto” each night, were alive yet not really vibrantly alive.

I will admit that I could hardly keep my eyes open; I kept falling asleep. Chekhov can be incredibly talky. On my behalf, my friend said the balcony was the wrong place in which to see Chekhov, especially this one.

But I did receive impressions besides the ones above. Everyone seemed to feel that the young actress represented the seagull in the story, and if she was a seagull, she may have come out ruffled and damaged, but she weathered what transpired.

Here is a seagull message as an urban shaman might relay it: She was able to ride the winds of those times. Watch a bird, any bird, though seagulls are particularly good at this. Allow their being to fill you, shift you into a lightness of being that let’s go of all discomfort.

To me, since there is a bird seagull which is shot early on in the play, the most powerful symbol of the seagull seemed to be the young playwright. He had a bit of success with his writing career but it wasn’t the sort of success to which he truly aspired. And for all his messages about wild creatures and new forms, he was not able to carry his message to the world in the form he wanted–in plays. He is the seagull who cannot ride the winds, who cannot stop people in their paths with his presence or his words or the urgency of his message, so he ends up killing that nature in his life and the nature that is his life–himself.

What message does Chekhov have for us today? Well, if you read this far, and paid attention, allowing them in, you may have received them. I would like to read some other interpretations of this.

Are we killing our seagulls–nature and the arts? These are our connections to our hearts, to what we love deep in ourselves. Nature and art are healing forces. Are many of us killing ourselves while we live? Making do? There is a way to live vibrant and feeling. There are many ways. I hope, that if you are reading this blog today, you find yours.

“If I gave up sanity,
I could fill a hundred versions of you.

There is no liquid like a tear
from a lover’s eye.”

-Rumi

The mantra of peace “Om shanti shanti shanti” is said to nurture calmness and contentment, and alleviate physical and mental stress. Try chanting it outloud, or silently in times of turmoil or when you’d like to spread a little peace and goodwill, or just chant the word, “Peace” itself.

Many blessings,

Your blogging friend, Melanie

Second in the series…

There’s nothing I like more than a day of enchantment and that’s certainly what I experienced Sunday, October 5, in the Big Apple. I knew I would attend the open class and rehearsal for Morphoses at the New York City Center, which has an incredible celebration of dance this autumn.

It was such a delight to watch ballet master Jeffrey Edwards teach company class. He used vocal sounds, and vivid vocabulary and imagery that obviously connected with the dancers. He seemed to give the dancers what they needed to prepare them for performance, something that is decidedly different from teaching dancers and sustaining them in daily class. I noticed something that perhaps only New York City Ballet ballet masters and teachers might address, what I can only call a lack of support for the upper back in the male dancers taking Morphoses’ class. Each of them had trouble on turns, losing the upper back and shoulders and therefore losing the turn.

After this classroom view, came an illuminating talk with Christopher Wheeldon, and then we were able to see Shutters Shut, which I had seen the night before. Set to a Gertrude Stein poem with voice and no music, I could again see the way in which Wheeldon is bringing in choreographers pushing the boundaries of the arts as Diaghilev once did, exploring dance in conjunction with other mediums. The dancers spoke Stein’s language and the language of the husband and wife team of Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon.

After this, I knew I would set off to see what lay at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, a location I had used in a poem about Duo Concertante, in what seemed like a haphazard fashion. Why had that location come to mind? I didn’t know what was there. As I walked east from City Center I saw the number 140. Again in a somewhat wily nily fashion (or was it intuition), I decided to be at that corner at 1:40 p.m. I took pictures along the way as I do, noting how certain themes arose in my head as I walked.

At 1:40 p.m., I noticed the scaffolding on one side of Fifth Avenue. Though I rather blanketly discounted it, it still worked on me from behind the scenes, for scaffolding means something is being built. On the other side of Fifth, however, I began to notice roofs within Central Park. What is this, I wondered. The trees had a mystical, almost faerie-like appearance. My heart sang, Fairyland.

What is this, I asked again. I reached stairs going down and as I began my descent saw to my complete amazement, the actor Russell Crowe talking to a slighter man. I had an internal dialogue with myself that went something like this.

“Shit, it’s Russell Crowe. What do I do?”

I discounted asking for his autograph as being simply moronic and something that someone who’d grown up in Bowling Green, Ohio, would do. Having lived in the New York metro area for some 20 years, I knew I simply would not do it. I flashed to my camera as I had been taking pictures all along.

Do I ask him if I could take his picture? As I stood there, I finally allowed the feeling of the scene to wash over me instead of focusing on some need to act. I knew he would not want his picture taken. I knew somehow not to intrude. I heard his Australian accent. I also felt and would process later the most incredible power coming from him, and without knowing what I was doing consciously, I honored it. I let the two men go ahead, still wondering what this was all about for me. They disappeared in a crowd of people that was like a scene out of Shakespeare or a film version of La Sylphide, which I have been working on in script form.

Again, I began to see England and fairyscapes. Then I turned a corner and went nuts with all that greeted me. I wished I were the best professional photographer in the world, all the while taking pictures. Children swarmed around me.

A little girl in pink came toward me and said, “There’s a slide over there. A slide!”

“I know,” I said, spying it. Of course, I took a picture with my trusty little Kodak. And then I saw them… bridges… bridges everywhere… in silver chain, lined with tree stumps and stones… some narrow… some you could never walk across your self as they bridged space or other dimensions, and the enchanted fairy realms. I had seen the sign that said, Children’s Zoo, but somehow had never been in there.

As I meandered, I came to a bridge with a fence. On one corner sat a crow. I am not making this up. I may be an urban fantasy writer with a vivid imagination, but I did not make this up.

The crow cocked his head at me. Magpie flew into my head. I was stunned that he didn’t fly away as I stood so close to him. His beak seemed a spectacular golden yellow. I took his picture. Still he didn’t fly away. Then as I continued to walk and glanced upward, I saw two pinkish-orange parrots up high that did not move. I knew immediately that they were fake. I kept walking and never looked back. I was now wondering if I really saw the crow, if the crow was real or some paper mache animated thing, and for a brief moment felt as though I were in some incredible dream. But I wouldn’t allow it to be only dream. Russell Crowe had been real, as real as we are as embodiments of energy.

At some point during this I began to hear the music from Pirates of the Caribbean. Swashbuckling music. This along with the feelings of ancient England continue to embue me even now.

The next day, I went to one of my favorite haunts, East/West Books, to pick up a crystal or two, and see what else was in store for me there. After picking up Siberian Jet, a light light stone from which I feel such peace, I held some other stones, ocean quartz, rutilated quartz, orange selenite, and others. I could not decide between them. Suddenly, a staff person appeared, and she seemed to know exactly what I needed. She opened a cabinet and procured a small piece of Danburite, a calcium borosilicate crystal. She also asked if I knew about The Book of Stones, which I did not.

She made me a copy of the page on Danburite and for some reason I asked if she’d make me a copy of the one on Moldavite, a stone I’d encountered on my last visit and with which I was working along with Peridot, both green stones. Besides writing and working with the story of La Sylphide, I have been drawn to the tales of King Arthur and Merlin throughout my life and am using this story in other writing.

This is a small part of what The Book of Stones says about Moldavite: “Throughout history, and even into pre-history, Moldavite has been regarded as a spiritual talisman… More recently, Moldavite has been viewed as a relic of the legend of the Holy Grail. In some recountings, the Grail was said to be not a cup, but a stone, an Emerald that fell from the sky. In other stories, the Grail cup was carved from the Emerald. The correspondences of the Stone of the Grail and Moldavite are clear. The ancients called all clear green gemstones ‘Emeralds,’ and Moldavite is the only such stone ever to have fallen from the sky. In history, there was even a physical ‘Grail’ discovered and brought to Napoleon, who was disappointed to find it was green glass. But, of course, Moldavite is green glass. Another chalice, this one made of gold and adorned with Moldavites, was passed down through the centuries and disappeared during the second World War…”

Well, for those with a penchant for the mystical, for history, and for tales of enchantment, such information is thrilling indeed.

What does any of this have to do with Monotones II? Something about sorcery, celestial beings, and the process of discovery. I have seen the piece performed by the Royal Ballet and the Joffrey. If you’re not a ballet dancer, you may not know its difficulty. When I saw it performed by the Morphoses cast on Saturday evening, my first thought was, I would never want to perform this ballet. I believe I’ve had that thought about it before, but couldn’t say now with which company or why. I didn’t know why until the performance of the piece ended and I turned to my friend, also a dancer.

What I noticed was that my focus went to the dancers and not to the choreography. What was lacking for me were the feelings of mystery and sacred something I have experienced when the piece is in sync and when the performance of it is also a mystery, the dancers as flawless technically as they are musical, reverent, and able to be moved deep in themselves.

I noticed ribs protruding, a kind of thinness that hurt. I noticed the largeness of the male dancers’ bodies and the nuances of their musculature. I noticed that the ballerina’s leotard was wrinkled over her solar plexus and seemed almost too large for her. I know that I thought I would never want to perform the ballet because I noted every shift from each of the male dancers that wasn’t part of the piece as choreographed. Otherwise, the dancers were technically perfect, and Wendy Whelan captured a muted kind of reverence. Muted though, not soaring, not quite resonant enough. I wondered if Wheeldon had chosen this piece as much for the dancers’ growth as for it being Ashton.

When the performance ended and I turned to my friend, she said, “They were totally wrong for this. Miscast.” When I discussed what had happened for me, we agreed that somehow that was a sign that the dancers had not been able to overcome their bodies, and whatever else was at play here. I know I felt that the ballerina would need the most ravishing and perfect body ever imagined. I don’t know if that is really true, but it is what I thought. However, when a dancer transports you, and Wendy Whelan often does this, the mind turns off and one simply experiences.

For more of this continuing tale and for the seagull’s message… please stop back.

Reiki blessed bliss card

This is the beginning of a series on reading the elements and weaving light, language, nature, and the vitality of the dance/theater experience. It is also a new kind of interactive dance and theater review.

Friday, October 3, began with a grand encounter with seagulls at South Street Seaport in New York City. Besides several teaching me about riding the air waves around the Seaport and in life in general, a seagull landed smack dab in my path and basically would not remove himself. Finally, I greeted him, and then we walked around him. Obviously, he had a message for me, which I didn’t understand till later.

Then I received the following:

Bodyscapes and Butterflies and Red, Read, Red

As the butterflies landed in droves, orange and golden, polka-dotted,
their lilac edged wings iridescent,
I knew there was nectar here, waiting:
The flowers, everywhere,
Bodies in water and the New York City falls, a treehouse in the garden,
A woman on a cell phone going round and round a revolving door.

I saw caterpillar bodies upright, not yet cocooned,
Lives in poetry flashing by as though
projected against a muted background of rainbows;
And rain, rain… that theme again…
Before the rain, After…
Dancing in the rain…
The butterflies coming in torrents
Aye, what a rush!

Polyommatus icarus fly!
Phoebis ruina disguised, never revealing your Ashtonian connections to Peru till now: enriched with Inca gold;
Yellow-ringed purple eye of the Costa Rican glasswing beckoning in faerie magic
Juxtaposed with the black-white-red of Parnassius Apollo.

Emperor moth lay for us your carpet of brown and orange,
We will ride
Yes, we will ride
On wings of air, gliding, gliding
To our calvacade, our destiny in flight…
Rising, falling
Arising again
Like fragments of an ancient bewitching sun.

–M.A. Stinson, 2008

I have to thank the company of Morphoses for their exquisite performances Friday night (and Saturday, which will be written about here and there). The company was a welcome sight for someone feeling a bit bereft of such exposure living for the time being in Toledo, Ohio. I almost don’t want to single out anyone because the dancers were so fluid, expessive, and trained to do both classical and contemporary movement. But some seemed to have a special power and having not seen them before I do wish to mention here, Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson, and those I have seen before, Adrian Danchig-Waring and Edwaard Liang, who was riveting in the Molnar piece.

The evening built well, beginning with Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, which I could see was one of his earlier pieces. Why? Because the detail seemed not as rich and something about it felt faded to me. But here is a chance to express one of the things I love about Wheeldon. He learns from the past and moves on. I see it in the new work he does. I did wonder several times if he wanted an arabesque with the knee facing down that I saw on the wonderfully nuanced Wendy Whelan and Stix-Brunell, a position that speaks to me somehow about the ability to turnout from a center of power. The other dancers used a turned out arabesque and it looked more empowered, but may not have been the choreographic effect desired.

I will comment the most on the Emily Molnar piece, Six Fold Illuminate, since it was the one I twice discussed with people asking me what I thought of it. It reminded me of when I was asked the same question about the first Harry Potter book, and I launched into all the glories of it only to hear, “but it’s about witches.” I’m a ballet/modern and improvisational dancer. That piece took me deep into my body. When a piece takes me there and I want to get up on stage and dance, I do not look at anything else. I cannot. I simply experience in the present moment.

The two people I talked to found the work derivative and Christopher Wheeldon’s work more inventive. One said, “When I go to the ballet, I want to be uplifted, I want to see pretty. This was ugly.” Both agreed that Steve Reich music drives them a little crazy with its repetitiveness. However, the interesting thing to me was that one liked Merce Cunningham and can tolerate some of the music and soundscapes he uses. What seemed to be in question here and in any of the Wheeldon pieces that folks had trouble with were the piece’s purpose in being, its depth, its core, the kind of music used, and what it was about (even in abstract, ballets have “story.”)

For my commentary on Six Fold, I must move onto the new Wheeldon piece, Commedia, a tribute to Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Forgive me if instead of Commedia del Arte references, which were certainly there, I saw Nijinsky fauns and Bob Fosse gyration, and if I recostumed these dancers, who were decked out in evocative white leotards and tights with little black diamond shapes. I really couldn’t help it. My imagination took hold and I saw vines of ivy blossoming on some, weaving and wrapping around them. Sprites appeared, and elves, and a feeling sometimes of creatures called up from the deep mysteries of time and space like images on oracle cards.

There were moments of such frolic and joy, and the open, clean ballet body. I could see the Commedia  troupe, ruffles and all, and their variety of characterizations. I remembered how Nijinsky’s work was found disgusting and inappropriate and profoundly ugly to the audiences of that time because the movements he used had a turned-in look unrecognized by ballet traditionalists. But now we’re used to it and keeping feet parallel to each other and the look of Egyptian-tinged flatness simply references history–or at least it did so in that ballet.

So back to Six-Fold Illuminate. It was so visceral that for me, it was exquisite. Emily Molnar is a shaman. She took Wheeldon, and perhaps his references to Balanchine and New York City Ballet, and made them felt, kinesthetic and newly alive. It was as though she were building a bridge between old and new, something a shaman does.

Six Fold Illuminate. You have to ask what is the title about? I believe it’s about the transformation of the Swan Queen, of the story ballet, of ballet itself. I saw the wings in the movement later in the piece and I saw illuminated the Swan Queen at the end of the piece, a swan queen born out of the old, glistening classical one, a vibrant metaphor for something that resonates within us all still.

Knowing what Mr. Wheeldon wishes to forge, I thank him profusely for commissioning this piece, and taking what must have been a giant risk. I learned and revelled more throughout the evening because I saw it. The differences were etched more clearly for me: between that which has a modern dance contracted, earthy, sometimes gnarled in-the-body expression, and that which is almost the out-of-the-body classical ballet orientation–the flat, open chest; the port de bras; and the structured placement.

Now, if we could add the language of story and show character arc even in abstract ballet so it is more easily understood by everyone, as well as music that pleases the heart and inspires the soul (perhaps through melody), plus contributing a new language of batterie to the Molnar, bringing more of it to the Wheeldon, we would have something that would ground and send soaring even those of us who find much contemporary ballet “ugly,” distancing, and unfathomable. But then what choreographer or artist ever speaks to everyone all the time?

–Melanie A. Stinson

If you enjoyed this piece, please comment below, and come back for more. The series continues after this post.