I've been dancing since I was three years old. For the last few years I've been trying to get back to it being a regular thing for me, at least one or two classes a week. Gone are the days when I didn't have to work and could dance every day. One of my happiest times was when it seemed I did nothing but dance everyday, all day.

This time around I've finally realized that I'm really over ballet. These days when I find myself in a ballet class I immediately feel myself tense up. It just doesn't represent relaxation anymore. All I can think is to stand up straight! Tighten all my muscles and get ready to work really hard. The hard work is the good part but the rest...? I want to feel happy moving. But I don't, I get really serious and rigid. So I stopped taking ballet classes and started taking contemporary classes. They're something more along the lines of jazz-African-world-folk-hip-hop. And I love them.

Everything about dancing this way is new to me. In comparison to ballet it's totally unstructured and free and fun and sometimes even kind of silly and it's awesome. But without that vocabulary of movements that I've stored for years (which is probably another reason ballet bores me to tears) I sometimes feel like it's more difficult for me to link it all together, to remember the right thing to do with my arms, to miss the right beat where there's a missed beat. I suddenly feel like a mediocre dancer and I'm not used to it. I certainly haven't been at my best for a while now but changing to a completely new style has dropped me back considerably. Every week I mildly dread it and every week I have the best time. I know I'm not the best dancer in class and I know that I often miss one tiny step lose track of the entire combination but I'm not going to stop and one of these days I know that I'm going to do a perfect combination and it's going to feel easy and natural, the way it used to. And then I'll try something new.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I don't take things seriously enough. I mean, not serious things, but seemingly small things. Like a compliment from a stranger. And I don't mean a wolf whistle from a passing car, I mean a kind and genuine compliment. When it happens I definitely accept it at full weight but I realize suddenly, months later that it seemed to just slip away. I should try harder to make it last.

Just went to look for a picture and saw the quote, "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." -Dr. Seuss

I also just thought: it is an average expectation, to believe you deserve respect.

DEVENDRA BANHART - 16th & Valencia Roxy Music.wmv

Scorping

I had an astrological reading by an evolutionary astrologer once. This means that what he includes in the way that he reads someone's charts is their past lives, karma, and tries to help us understand our dharma. It was very interesting and because, he said, it was easiest for him to explain by making it into a story, that's what he did. And he referred to influential people in my charts as different royal figures -to express how much influence they may have in my life. This was also one of the most accurate readings I've ever had. He taped it for me and every so often I would listen to it and become focused on some part that seemed to actually have come into play in my life. At the time I got this reading I could barely understand any of the events he was seeing because they were explained in such a general way: 'There's a man in your life. He has a lot of power -we'll call him the king- he has some level of control over some part of your life. This is going to change. It will end somehow and when it does you'll be in the spotlight, in a good way. It'll be a time when you get to show people who you really are.' Interestingly enough this did happen and by no means was it: A) anything I'd ever have believed would happen and B) anything I could have consciously made happen.He also explained to me that my North Node is in Scorpio which means that my dharma will be to go with inclinations to act on Scorpio-like characteristics. This is how I'll achieve happiness.
This was baffling. It was soooo vague, "Go toward Scorpio." he kept saying. It's the thing that always stood out the most and has absolutely haunted me. I've spent hours reading all different explanations of what Scorpio is and how someone who is not a Scorpio could be very like a Scorpio. There are pages of this online. Add to that the pages on what it means to have a Scorpio North Node, what it means in a particular house, etc., etc. I've been sure I had it all figured out only to feel myself baffling all over again a million times.
I lost track of that guy but not too long ago I got a simple tarot reading in which the reader used my birth chart and probably other charts to tell me what the past present and future look like and she got the past dead right. Like crazy dead right. Again, all in metaphors and general because this was by email actually, and I hadn't told her anything but when and where I was born. But even in a generalized story book way the details were uncanny. So the future is looking bright. But I can't tell you what it is yet because it hasn't happened.
And tonight I just read this: "Scorpio, which likes to hold on dearly to the end, and then releases fully and with determination" and I thought: that is EXACTLY how I am. So I guess I've got it even if I can't understand it or detect it, but it sure is easy to recognize when someone puts it in the right words.