INNER AND OUTER LANDMARKS
cement /sɪˈmɛnt
noun: cement
a powdery substance made by calcining lime and clay, mixed with water to form mortar or
mixed with sand, gravel, and water to make concrete
To cement: to paste - to bond - to bind - to superglue
To embody cement in a new perspective. To see it as a window that invites us to move beyond the limitations it might seem to offer. The cities, the walls, the spaces that might have felt like a confinement, away from nature or from feeling the freedom of a vast open space.
The idea of introducing a metaphor like cement opens a different pathway in our brains that feeds an invisible language of soul, so that we can rediscover a way to love the places and the art that surrounds us once we have made love with the limitations that cement embodies.
It is a kind of invitation to flow with the limitations that contain us or perhaps a way of perceiving the art of non-resistance, of dropping our weights, of yielding into the power of walls, of letting go, falling, and allowing cement to be that image that reminds us of bondage and freedom simultaneously.
Let’s start this metaphorical journey with a love story.
The love story between Cement and Sky.
Sky had a vision. A desire to fly and move with her long beautiful feathered wings and be an essential part of the wind and the clouds. See from the highest of highest. Move as she needed, without limitations, touching every tree, every creature as she does so.
Cement had a dream. A need to be strongly connected to the earth and adhere to the land and be an essential part of the ground and the soil. To see from the perspective of earth and gravity.
Their dance became a friction of landmarks.
Their language a play of words where each of them envisioned a different destiny: one of highest skies and grand landscapes the other of tangible beauty of belonging to the places, the earth and to the people.
Their initiate struggle to bond and bind making them relentless, resentful and tired.
The pain as they tried to win each other, persuade each other, resulted only in more pain and tension. One too vast and light, the other too heavy and dense.
The eternal hustle of the forces of structure and order with limitless possibility.
They moved, they wrestled until the wrestling resembled a dance. They tried to win each other until they tried to soften and found a way to meet, somewhere in a place of togetherness. Allowing, letting go and leaning into the centre of their presence. Somewhere where their hearts could pulsate and not feel confined by the other. They knew deep down that they had one thing in common: a profound hope, a quiet but strong hope for interaction and playfulness. A conviction of sorts that in their play they could meet without overpowering each other. Giving permission to both expressions to move and make their art, their song, their presence.
Once they allowed the gravity and density of Cement to receive and commune with the lightness and ethereal presence of Sky, the alchemy happened. They experienced the vast possibility of meeting in an invisible pulsation at the core of their existence. A dance that came from the longing of each other’s heart.
A type of joy not affected by opinions or by actions nor by the desire of self. A joy that comes not from themselves but from the space between their non-opposing forms. A joy without expectation of the other beyond that of its presence interacting, living fully and overflowing from love itself.
Their words made poetry:
At the centre of myself
Where I am utterly vulnerable,
There is my deepest desire,
And my deepest desire is unarmed.
Longing for joy,
The simple joy of living.
An inclusive peace embraced them both in their opposition and in their complexities. All of each other, not just the holy bits where able to dance, the heaviness and the lightness made an unarmed dance of dense concrete grey cement endlessly holding and releasing the wide open blue Sky in an eternal pulsating embrace.
A cosmic inhale and exhale creating a stream of beauty in the form of myriad inner and outer landscapes. Movement and stillness, a harmony of mutual awareness weaving new possibilities into new realities.
As they quietly allowed their dance to play out, they finally found peace in the stillness and a new vision where the two could coexist.
Suddenly these words: 5,4,3,2,1… coming back to yourself, feeling your body and your weight. The place where you are lying down.
I wake up from the most profound restorative sleep. I feel the cold breeze on my body, I sense the beauty of the open blue sky and the loving way the ground, its heaviness is receiving my body. I see the walls of the room, and my experience of being part of the dance is still awake in me.
This realisation that actually there is a vast inner space able to contain the immensity of my heart. That as I see reality, I have this presence of joy that is larger than the walls surrounding me.
My front body feeling the space, back body feeling the soil, the cement, the earth beneath. Both breathing me. My relationship to both a love story. Both dancing within my breath. The vibration of movement still stirring the deepest layers in aliveness in warmth in connection, in feeling…
The conversation between them both, understood as a unique graceful interaction of my microcosm and the expression it takes in the outer world.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
How can this be? I ask myself. As always scripture comes to plant a reflection a place for our hearts to dance. The quiet hope of our limited understanding of this outer world, the ways we dance with it. How we surf and free run, if we only allowed the story of love with the wind, with the Spirit to be this quiet pulsation of joy that makes us alive again, full of possibilities, not contained, but free.
A flock of words and phrases come as I journal this experience:
Spirit presence. Need for joy. Cement nourished by Sky´s dancing. Ultimate
Relationship. The dry real. The passion of dancing. Quiet hope. At the centre of
everything. Utterly vulnerable. Deepest desire. To love. To be contained. The longing.
The art of joy. The healing of movement in awareness. The revelation of soul
whispering. The play of verses. The joy of prayer and laughter. Coming back home.
Endurance. Restoration. Permission to be. Landscapes. Free running. Art as medicine.
What is freedom. Who contains the heart. Our confinement is not real. We are made
of vastness. Spirit comes, you hear its sound.
A fool looks at the finger that points to the sky.
- Amélie
This month we invite you to wander through The Creative Muse: Spaces Too Small To Contain Us.
Please take your time to explore our concept as you make your way through the following practices and offerings.
LISTEN
Part 1 of our new audio series created by one of our members
Common Ground by Sally Balfourth:
TED Talk Daily : Spaces building us
WATCH
Concrete and free-running
Movie clips: with Pina Bausch
Cement and cities. High reverence, a story of love and surrender in movement.
SEE
Fernando Botero, controversial rebel Colombian artist.
His life in a documentary about his passion, breaking through the walls of cultural imposition, changing landscapes, demolishing concepts of beauty. Bringing his touch of “Paisa” (meaning those who are born in Medellin, Antioquia) to the international art world. Breaking the concept of space and volume. Making friends with what is possible. Huge sculpture figures, massive bodies in the fullness of his art, generosity, sensuality in his work.
So much love, drama and passion poured into each piece.
“Let yourself go. My life is art. I am not a slave to reality. I am a slave to art.”
- Fernando Botero
One touching episode in the documentary, (now available to stream virtually), involves a dove bronze that was bombed in Medellín - another casualty of that city’s violent past involving the drug cartels and Pablo Escobar. Rather than discard the damaged statue, Botero insisted the charred, ripped-apart dove stay in its place, and nearby, he placed a second dove, in its full majesty.
The parallel between the past violence and the present peace is stirring.
What makes him so compelling into our Muse this month is the way he is able to manipulate space and perspective. When he draws attention to the monumentality of his figures, showing them in spaces that seem too small to contain them. He has remained adamant that he does not paint ‘fat people’; what he paints, he insists, is ‘volume’, and the ‘sensuality of form’. He has explored volume and sensuality of form in subjects as diverse as the circus, reinterpretations of Old Masters, nudes, Latin American street scenes, domestic life, bordellos, and portraits of political figures. Botero’s sculptures adorn public spaces around the world.
MOVE
Heart Caves:
Two videos to introduce a very powerful breath technique to help us move beyond our personal perception of containment.
Please ensure you watch Part 1 in full first before moving onto Part 2.
In Part 1 we introduce the method and technique, plus explain the importance of titration in terms of increasing personal capacity and tolerance.
In Part 2 you can practice along with the video.
Collective Energy:
The recording of two live classes in which we explore the idea of playing with sympathetic charge.
Go safely and bravely beyond the boundaries of your breath for better energy, immunity, purpose and nervous system regulation and tolerance.
With respect to this dance with Spirit
Ana Muriel x
anamuriel.org
Mother, artist, mentor, story-weaver, movement facilitator and co-founder of
@Our_Wildflowers an online programme to empower mothers to live fully and wholly.
