Coming to Austin, art 2

Another day
another 22 minute run through

Sonoma Coast, in the middle of California,
called Northern California,
and near the OAK where the story/ talk
starts
and same time of year, October of 2010

So, I'm in the OAK airport, I'm in line, I've got all sorts of stuff,
I don't travel light,
if you come to dance, this is the full backpack I carry just for a couple
hours away,
and I've got this massage table like thing.

And I'm going to a place I've never been.

I'm on a journey.

The table is a journey.

My life since February 1, 2009 is a journey.

My life since April 13, 1945 is a journey.

This moment is on a journey, and either I'm awake to this moment,
on not.

And learning to wake to each moment,
to lots of moments
is a journey.

And you listen, you sit in a chair,
and if we did a few things besides what you usually do,
it would be a journey.

Yes, yes, listening to me talk, that is a journey, if I'd ever tell the story:
why am I going to Austin,
why am I leaving from OAK,
what's this about living on Orcas Island,
and what's THAT journey about?

Okay.
Let's come out of journeying, just a moment,
feel ourselves in this moment , in this chair,
or standing on this floor.

Can you and I sense the gravity of a spine holding up our head.
Can we find arms and legs and feet, and are our feet touching the ground.

Can we feel gravity.
Can we feel the air coming in and out of our lungs.

Once upon a time: no gravity.
Once upon a time: no breathing.
The womb.
We came out.
Wow: light, gravity, breathing.

Sound there had been all along.

So, I'm in Oakland, and I'm on my way to Austin,
and I'm a little scared.
I don't know anyone in Austin who's willing to depart from
their rut, their pattern, their hurry, their program,
their ongoing life
to welcome me at the airport, to put me up for a few
nights, to orient me to Austin.

They don't give a shit.
They are too busy.
I'm not important to them.
All could be true, or could be stories,
and the two people behind me in the line start the trip
off nicely:
What's the table for?
Feldenkrais and the Anat  Baniel Method.

Oh, we know that well.
We are both accupuncturists and going back to Vermont
and it does our heart good to see body work tables.

What I do isn't really body work, it's

We know, we know, Feldenkrais is fantastic, where are
you going?

Austin.

Do you know people there?

No.

You're moving there?

For the winter, October till April.
I want to work with more special needs children and musicians
as well as the usual aching backs, necks, shoulders.

In the summer you live in the Bay Area here?
(Does everyone know that OAK aka Oakland is in the Bay ARea,
next to Berkeley, but more wild and wooly and integrated and multilevel
and both right across the Bay from San Francisco, and that Bay
in Bay Area, is San Francisco Bay,
second biggest estuary in North America after the Cheesapeake Bay)

No, summers a small island up in the Pacific Northwest,
in Puget Sound, above Seattle, north of Victoria the city
at the tip of Vancover, Canada.
The island is called Orcas Island and I imagine it's beauty
is kind of like Vermont's.

We've heard of Orcas.

So you know people in Austin?

Two, but they won't get back to me, so I'm starting it with
couching surfing this couple I know over the internet.

Good luck.

And the line moves on


And they go to on plane, and I go to another,
and on my plane, more evidence of "good luck"
The people next to me are a nice young couple,
both in jeans,
and by the end of the flight they've had the three minute
elbow shoulder lesson,
and are excited about my work
and the two men in front of us, older
(as in my age, but the usual silver hair that accompanies
"my age" in the chronological sense,
look like lawyers, businessmen,
both handsome, obviously doing well,
and in jeans)

Austin is going to be good.

So, I've got this table.
I didn't always have this table.
I didn't always take off for new towns not knowing anyone.

How did I get the table, the craft, the skills to heal special needs children,
and radically improve the tone and ease and quality of a musician's playing,
and enhance sleep, or dance, or sex, or yoga or tai chi?

When did that start?

How did that start?

Mid fifties.

Why?

Went to a weekend workshop while living in Sonoma.

What am I doing in Sonoma, which is in the middle of California,
though that part is called Northern California?
I thought this was a journey from Orcas to Austin.

Well yes.

And
(damn 22 minutes is up)

And I might have a one man show here,
if I weave in a group lesson,
and someone lying on the table,
and how I learned Feldenkrais
and the whole
Sonoma, Tucson, Atlanta, Arcata, Orcas,
leaving Marlie
living together for five months though
we knew that end was Feb 1, 2009

and so on,
exciting
and
"I don't know" what I'm going

which is fine:
I'm in the discovery mood
mode
manner


tune in this afternoon, all seven readers,
and I'll take a continuing gander at this adventure tale

love
chris


And the journey to love
ah,
and
the one
to waking
ah

we'll see
we'll see
said the blind man