31.1.09

not far from the city the sky gets darker and then as your eyes adjust you realise that its still quite light and tinted with this nondescript hue of grey, purple, orange and pink mixed together.
each time the arrivure and departal are different.

30.1.09

holly made delicious wilted spinach with garlic and we ate it with the polenta i made and then olivier cut my hair and its really good. its very good to have friends from home living in the same foreign city as you. i think also your friendness can develop in new ways.

29.1.09



on first impression i thought snow, but apparently it was the action of air freezing the water present on the skin of the tree.

28.1.09

filling and emptying
releasing and receiving
A Constructed World bring together new works that demonstrate moving links between different places, technologies and layers of knowledge, making a place for what is missing, forgotten or lost. In this ambulant research, that is both an exhibition and archive in motion, their work reminds us of the decisions we make that constantly force us to consider what we are willing to keep and lose.
This text was taken from the exhibition prose of art duo 'A Constructed World' who are currently having a show at Uplands in Melbourne. I found the text interesting particularly when taken out of context and more loosely applied.
it is wonderful and also strange to be in love with someone when you cant keep them.
there is a real freedom present.
to love someone and notice that a part of them is also in love with you
but they cant keep you.

27.1.09

the body is dreaming, the soul is awake
anna barth, butoh teacher
One person dances to the sound you make, and you dance to the sound the person makes.
about the present (taken directly from Lara Martelli's website, a german dancer and choreographer)...

if past to future is an on horizontal line, the present moment is not in time - it is a vertical movement - transcending time.
osho

the cells of our body are dying, the neurons in our brain are decaying, even the expression on our face is always changing, depending on our mood. what we call our basic character is only a "mindstream," nothing more. today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. where did that good feeling go? new influences took us over as circumstances changed: we are impermanent, the influences are impermanent, and there is nothing solid or lasting anywhere that we can point to.
what could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. look at a thought: it comes, it stays, and it goes. the past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.
the only thing we really have is nowness, is now.
sogyal rinpoche

23.1.09

stand on the soles of your feet as if your whole existence was in your feet.
stand as an answer and fall into the unknown.
Imre Thormann, butoh teacher
wow life is so explosive
and full of wind and clarity and and muddied knees
love it.

21.1.09

You'll find your path, you just need to patient and let it happen without trying to control it...
discipline and practice, with patience and presence with yourself and where you are at right now.
Esther, poignant words from a person barely known on the street after a dance class.

20.1.09

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this featherbed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. "
Robert Louis Stevenson

19.1.09



today olivier was talking about how it is interesting the way we choose to portray ourselves in our art and on the internet, "what i am choosing to disclose and what i am choosing to withhold..."

18.1.09


we walked on a river, a very frozen river. so strange and interesting and beautiful and slippery. in the shallows you could see the bottom and i saw tiny fish swimming underneath. other parts were like black sheets of glass.
today i noticed that sometimes my center is outside of my body. and this can make my chest feel tight and my disposition a little wonky.

by pulling the awareness of my center back into my body i gained a lot of stability and balance sometimes forgotten or lost. I experimented a lot while walking, we walked ten kilometres in the snow today and many parts were icy and difficult to walk on, but if i consciously centered myself pulling my energy up above my head and down through the ground and then resting in my center (pelvis) i found it much easier to remain balanced.

14.1.09


dates soaked in orange juice mixed with almond meal and a little coconut oil. im not sure what it does but it is very delicious.
Thanks to the interaction be­tween subterranean magma and life on earth, molecules that produce energy are tempted to dance. I am just there, caught in the ex­change.

All of my tools and instruments are inside my body. Materials of my materials are also there. When a performance is finished, my work leaves nothing behind. I let dance rise be­tween one body and another—nothing more, nothing less. I am currently looking for the only place that accommodates this act inside the body. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. I stay with ever-changing life, and I will leave nothing behind.

Min Tanaka, butoh dancer founder of body weathering.

13.1.09

i hope we see us later

11.1.09

the dance in the room to write.
and improvise in the awake to act
and
possibly vote impulse and create implemented
over a combination of action and reaction -
apparently the moon is one hundred per cent full and i counted seventeen stars in the royal velveteen sky. Seventeen, in the rectangle drawn by the lines of buildings. My face upward.
i was just listening to a feedback track and it started getting really interesting for me when the electric element i was cooking on finally heated up and the sound of frying folded back into the feedback... and i realised there is an engaging quality in natural field recordings and more abstract mechanical sound explorations (noise), because listening to a recording is a living experience, and the all sounds seem to feed in, and the noise out. not always. but there is a potential for this to occur.

8.1.09

you know i type words while speaking aloud. while speaking out loud. i recommend this, speaking out loud and hearing your voice in the air in front of you and around you. and i recommend watching the tiny waves of your voice traveling out to their farthest points and then dissipating or folding back inwards.
the moon is eighty five percent full and it is minus nine degrees.
always-
arriving
and re--arriving
and further arriving...
and leaving, wandering, moving beyond
and then
falling
into my arrival
how long is it possible to hold this arriving and move with arrival?
to move with mindfulness and being- in each part,
each step,
each tiny movement of limbs
and arrive.
here now.
and for this arriving to arrive constantly anew in each moment.
and how long is a moment anyway? a full breath in and out? or less?
a second? or less?
awkward silent undressing with strangers
and a man sings outside the room
his voice echoing through the stairwell

a long musical pissing turning into the dribbling sounds of water in pipes,
and thumping of her bare feet from this room into a joining one
and she sucks air through a sniffling nose.

i just observed an interesting phonomen. As I held up things that i thought about buying from a bio store i closed my eyes and felt my muscles reacting. Some things that my head thought were good were pushed away from me back on to the shelf and my knees bent. Other things made my body relax and feel centered and energised. I left with with the lightest feeling backpack full of food and bottles of things. I must remember to always collect things like this.
lean in closer and throw arms wide to the sky.
falling and finding the impulse to be pulled upwards.

so, stillness in flight...
clarifying what i am doing here. with these scrolling pages of thoughts and images,
flickering,
what am i looking for with this constant yet selective documentation and poetry and wandering?

i guess i want to find balance and a deeper truth, contentment, excitement and aliveness in life... and am doing that
through an exploration into and through and of stillness and movement.
physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual.

through the mediums of dance/ improvised physical movement and spoken/text/vocalising
meditation
geographical travel and
walking through urban landscape and countryside
and walking, and walking faster and slower and experimenting with pace and direction and form of walking.
and then of course there is health and nutrition and cooking and loving as ways to investigate further this aliveness and balance and wonder.

7.1.09

the sound of all the people climbing up the snow encrusted stairs leading out of the train station.

5.1.09

lack of punctuation ensures the reader stays awake - Megsy

4.1.09

we watched from the window,
the fattest of snow
falling like flakes of dried coconut
lit up from all the other windows
i wanted to collect it
and make something delicious with it.

1.1.09

there is the faintest flickering of tiny snow falling.
frozen ground
laced with iced crystals,
air
thick with gun powder smoke
and the pop, pop, popping of constant firecrackers.
and then a bang! that shakes the ground,
residue, wasted, all over,
hands in pockets,
grainy orange powder and burnt cardboard shells.
the streets feel like war.