Is it a place?
Is it a feeling?
Is is a person or people?
Could we experience HOME in our body? What does that look like? What does that mean?
Is HOME the earth? Our community? A building? A spiritual experience? and/or something else?
What are some of the positive connotations of HOME?
What are some negative connotations of HOME?
What does it mean and what does it take to address both these positive and negative aspects?
What makes HOME joyful?
What makes HOME a challenge?
What does it mean/ look like/ feel like to move away from and return to a HOME?
............. How do you, dear Reader, respond to these questions? What movements does your body make as you reflect? Please feel free to include your thoughts in the comments!
.........
Over the past four months, I've been deep into the research process of these questions with four other dance artists. In addition, we've been asking:
How do we, as dancers, experience HOME in our bodies?
How do we, as people who work with other bodies as educators and healers, hear and observe how other people manifest HOME in their bodies - or not?
What can we learn about looking at how we define HOME? What can we learn from the ways we are drawn to or repelled by certain notions of HOME? How does digging into and sharing our stories about HOME provide more information about us and the way we interact with the world?
How does this process and our ideas about HOME change as we gain more information during this research?
What are your thoughts?
Stay tuned for our results!
And, if you'd like to see the performance live, you can get tickets here.
......
As part of our conversations during our studio research, we often come back to the idea that the body is a microcosm of the universe. In this case, our body is our physical home in the greater home of our communities, environments, world, and cosmos.
Included below is are some visual reflections that Sarena, one of the dance artists, found and shared.
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| Original source unknown |
Home is mostly a place from which derived significant feelings of security, peace, beauty not required but an accelerator of the sense. A place you can be free. A place you can grow (family, lovers, dear lovely friends enhance this freedom and growth). In the Army I lived in many places. Most were transient in my mind. Several could have become home for me, felt home at the time for reasons above. I found my home 17 years ago here on the Salt Ponds. It hits all the criteria above, chief of which is its spectacular beauty. Beauty led me to mindful contemplation of this place. Each daily engagement leads me more deeply into mindful attentiveness, the writing of which leads me to precision, making me a more exact votary. My home has witnessed life, passing, incredible love, growth of children and their children. Now I contemplate passing myself. I have experienced in numerous visions standing in a new home while firmly in this one. I have been pinging myself to address this for several reasons. I may post once or twice on FB sharing some of my experiences that began forming these expectations. Stand by.
ReplyDeleteMatins
ReplyDeleteLOVE OF HOME
"To some coming home means the end
of the journey. But I think of it as the start of another journey- the beginning."-
Willie Nelson,
from his bio, It’s a Long Story
~
May everyone who longs to be home,
come home to the home in your heart,
its memories and sense of comforting place.
Dear friend Becky Crouch Patterson
Coming home, being home after a journey is at once an arrival at a new day and a return to that place of comfort, memory, joy, like Max’s first walks, returning home, Westminster trots of happiness and urgency to be round it again.
Home is your quiet place, where you find peace.Be at peace. Find joy. Give it to your heart.If you see a chance, give joy to a neighbor.
Thank you Becky Crouch Patterson for this prayerful sentiment and your lovely book that makes it real. ����♥️
From friend Becky Patterson. A remarkable writer and artist who has written on home and life one of the best non fiction books I have read titled “The Ranch that is Manuel Meza
ReplyDeleteWHAT IS HOME: picking a bouquet of photos that remind me of what makes a home; family - lost, found, started over. They won't mean anything to anyone else . But to me it's a reckoning. My need to gather and post is greater than ANYONES need to view. What makes a HOME for me: Mexican music, flowers,food by Dayna, sitting in the same place every morning, photos of the past and present. The return of family now and then so I don't live like a ghost in my own house.
Home is mostly a place from which derived significant feelings of security, peace, beauty not required but an accelerator of the sense. A place you can be free. A place you can grow (family, lovers, dear lovely friends enhance this freedom and growth). In the Army I lived in many places. Most were transient in my mind. Several could have become home for me, felt home at the time for reasons above. I found my home 17 years ago here on the Salt Ponds. It hits all the criteria above, chief of which is its spectacular beauty. Beauty led me to mindful contemplation of this place. Each daily engagement leads me more deeply into mindful attentiveness, the writing of which leads me to precision, making me a more exact votary. My home has witnessed life, passing, incredible love, growth of children and their children. Now I contemplate passing myself. I have experienced in numerous visions standing in a new home while firmly in this one. I have been pinging myself to address this for several reasons. I may post once or twice on FB sharing some of my experiences that began forming these expectations. Stand by.
ReplyDeleteBecky's Book on home is "The Ranch that was Us."
ReplyDelete