Hello to you, with love.

There are simple ways I've gradually prepared to offer support for however you choose to move through these Covid-19 Pandemic Days, and support  for your general aliveness and resilience.

There is a lot of loss, now. But not for everyone. So there's acute unevenness and disconnection. There's a lot of disruption - frustration of habitual assumptions, of desires, and of real needs. Many dead stops, re-starts, and re-stops that just go on into emptiness. And various human reactions to all of this. There is discontinuity.

On the other hand, I see continuity. Continuity in people's dedication to others and to responsibilities. Continuity in love, abiding. Continuity in pursuing our interests. A fascinating and basically unaffected continuity in expectations of our societies, our leadership, our future. Continuity, as many have noticed and relied on, in nature.

There's also so much that is continuing but is also wildly morphing. Some things are changing shape with no outer limit that we can perceive, and some are obviously transforming, but we can't tell if change will be complete, or permanent, or beneficial.In the middle of the muddle, here we are. Here we'll be until we're not anymore. I know everyone is doing their best to discern how to proceed, and I'm there too. Stopping, morphing, re-starting, repeat.

​I've decided to offer some online movement-mediation classes as we make our way through the first half of 2020. See my Classes page for information. 

If you're a Spotify user, you'll find a growing set of 5Rhythms practice Waves and gentle interludes here. They're there to serve as ground to dance on and relax into.

 I am gradually sharing mixed Waves and quiet meditative soundscapes to support practice on Mixcloud. 

If you are interested in a one-on-one online session, let me know. We could connect to explore what's moving for you, and to allow you to move with it, with my support.

News, changes, and goodies will also be available in my Facebook group.

Above all: please take good care, have patience, go easy on yourself and others. May we emerge from this cocoon, eventually, with strong wings and readiness for new perspective.

More love,
Chantell

For me, this time of the earth's orbit has infinite and surprising precious shades, purposes, and openings. I decline to follow any script about it, now, because it's asking me to seek the unknowing of what I may have come to think I know. How can I weave with what is already woven? 

I must have raw yarn, I must have web that runs free. 

The delicate, robust, palpable, unpredictable, resounding touchings between what we call "dark" and "light" for convenience's sake... well they shake, mesmerize, tenderize, mystify, and empower me. Here is one sudden, alighting-from-nowhere, first-hand experience of this corner of the year.

Written just now to a person of magic who you might miss because of their humility and subtlety.
Written to a person who embodies the precious and positive - the much-needed-now - dynamic power of the conscious wizard, the love-witch, the intuitive, the spirit-knower, the darklight, the door-knocker, the threshold-crosser, the eventual all-knower, and beyond that the all-releaser. Maybe you know someone like this. Maybe this part of humanness wants to dance through Hallowe'en~Samhain~All Saints~Dia de los Muertos, however you call this passage-time. I don't know. That's okay.
​
YOU ARE MAGICAL

you are magical
you are full of light

you are magical
you are full of light

inside you is all-light all directions
all flooded
all reflected
all bathed
all glimmer
all light with room for all dark

so not the piercing kind of light, the kind that banishes

no. the kind that can share a synchrony of quiet breaths
the kind that is like hummingbird family
viewing the world together from a silky hidden cup-nest

light, a gentle brush of hands
​light, the long sigh of a wee child relaxing every limb
light, your subtle smile, a whisper
that forcelessly byspasses all stinginess all defences
and lights the light in me

that is the dark sweet light that comes
the light of the dark black night that comes
from the deep-space windows of your pupils
and the seas of your self

i
i have a question
where does energy come from
i’d like some now, please

ii
oh, which way is up?
eventually i’ll know
this dance will tell me

iii
hello, moody dance
i know you like to visit
i shake you silly

iv
uh-oh, life’s leaking
out my eyes again, pressure
dropping, yay that’s good

v
blobbed around on floor
nerded my way to heaven
that was how I danced
​

Teachers, family, friends, artists, true leaders, I honour you.

~~~~~
When you speak I am 
heard,
not only hearing

Your tongue pulses and pulses
funnels and funnels
what I've been waiting for

and what is overdue
to arrive in my own mouth

and what I've been knowing
but not enough

Thank you
for finding 
my losts

and for re-giving 
my world to me
~~~~~

rising wind
clouds nearing, here they come barreling in, feel the hush
the moist pure angelic softness of air the closeness
ah the brush the touch the thick generousness in your mouth
​
rising wind
clouds rearing, here they come racing over, see the dim 
the sun a great hot eye
closing bit by bit, then all at once
as if belonging to a sleepy baby
ah the relief of shade of less of quieter of covered

hey did you know
clouds are a web

soul-catching web
wispy billowy graceful soul safety-net up above
for those moments when
you jump out of your skin

when you bounce out of your bones into some hovering space
of shock or dismay or worry or 
terror flash-freezing
grief like glass powdering

don’t worry because every single time
clouds will catch you and send you back
for sure, for sure
infinite times

faithful ever-forming and ever-cleansing
those darling, irreplaceable clouds
catching

faithful and ever-forming and ever-cleansing
darling, irreplaceable you

i release the fact that i often do not walk my talk
or even walk my thought

i release freely and without a hint of self-punch the fact that I have never 
taken up the torch
or taken off all the clothes 
required to do this thing called writing seriously
not even enough torch-taking or clothes-peeling
to have maintained a decent blog or whatever they're called now
perhaps you have an equivalent 
in your life
one, two, three, open hands, let go

i release conversely
and perversely 
the fact that i am letting myself be hugged tight by the Muse
until I'm all done writing this
instead of preparing supper at the proper time
as a truly good mother and competent human would

and finally i breezily - i said breezily - release all self-judgement 
related to enjoying songs like this in the afternoon
come on you know the kind
oh, you do
i know you do.

​whaaaa, heart hinge creaks open
because I just heard the simplest wind chime ringing two-three notes
as it dances in the air

notes like the bees' sting
and the bees’ honey
mixed together

thank you, thank you
dance between creator and creation
thank you for mellow succulent autumn winds whispering and snaking

thank you, thank you
dance between human beings and creation
thank you for your diamond minds and your breathtaking making

would I ever have invented wind chimes
even given centuries and centuries and centuries to live?
I have my doubts

but I am grateful to the point of ache
for the partner dance between 
the world’s breath, circling wetly around this island
and divine chimes made by the work of people’s hands - set upon creating harmony

my marrow melts to fluid thanks 
​for the dance between the maker and the made

oh, now the sun is spotlighting the whole duet
and I am transfixed

the yellow leaves are clapping
and no amount of thank yous is enough

you dancers 
your movements
you make heat swirls and infrared zigzags in the air 
and I don’t even need science goggles to see them
your presence here, of all places,
your choice to be here

you dancers
your good efforts
ones that take root
and ones that bounce harshly or uselessly or forlornly 
or not even noticed, off surfaces

your fresh starts, one way or the other
your big breathing

you dancers
your awarenesses
rising, dawning gently one by one as they will
shining upon your brow, your mind, your rolling hips like hills

your awarenesses
flocking, flapping up in dozens as they will
honking through your bones, your muscles, your spine twisting 
in wild migrations

you dancers
all this, all your power
is like an arm raised, with hand cupped
and there goes my heart, lying in the palm

by your movement 
breath 
awareness,
a heart: mine
is held up, cupped

to be showered by sky’s circle dance, to undergo:
star-piercings
moon-bath
rains 
drumming down with rolling silver fingers
wind 
arranging howls all around it, lacing calls all through it

by your movement 
breath 
awareness,
sun is pulled down its path to this place 
to do its showing and showing and showing
in big light in plain sight of your dance

sun drawn here to this ground
by the raised hand of your dance
your dance holding this heart high and it gets shone upon
​
this heart gets held up to a wider horizon
and whole world is shown to it
because of
you dancers

again today 
the mother shows herself
to the sun

reclining as she’s always doing
in her low places, and the ones that tower
in her tangles and openings

her flanks and back shine up and out
because frost melts on her form even in this cold
and it gleams, the slow sweat of her huge self

her broad cheeks, her high forehead, her bony chin rise up in peaks and slopes
her lovely old face rimed with glorious white whiskers
of age attained

sky fingers of light venture to approach her face and body 
her face and body both clothed and bare
to the request of touch from above

bushes and trees wave their bare arms to breathe for her
and hold her tight her with their lacing wanting winding roots

a few green blades of grass
a remnant scrap of yellow leaves in a grove
a handful of blood berries
they all yearn into the light that collects around her mass

they reach themselves
singly and small
into open air
to be melted of white cage, to be liberated by light

see them stretch in their desire 
to be shone through