HOW TO IMPROVISE

Empty your core

Hold onto the center

The dissolving center

VERY VULNERABLE

 i’m tired of my life

i’m scared to hear my own voice

i’m scared of here

i’m scared to know i have a voice

i’m afraid of the future

i’m afraid with the future

i’m afraid through the future

i’m afraid in the future

and everywhere

i feel like everywhere is now and here and the future

i think my family hates me

i don’t know which direction is up

i’m afraid of how much i change 

i’m afraid of change

i’m afraid of writer’s block

i’m afraid i’m writer’s block

i hate my moments

i hate my hands

i hate thinking i hate myself

i hate the thought “i hate myself”

i know the answer

i think “i know the answer”

i hate the thought “i know the answer”

i am sorry for everything i’ve done

i’m ready to leave now

not like that

i mean like go live in a monastery or something

i am afraid i’m becoming my mother

i’m afraid i’m stagnating

i’m afraid i’ll never fall in love

i’m afraid this will never change

i’m afraid i’ll always be afraid 

Thinking And Writing In The Future Perfect, Right Now

 I feel this ease. I feel like I don’t need the thing that’s superfluous. I feel at home in my body. For even my wrong choices I’m grateful. Anything is my teacher. I want to make my life glisten with wisdom, muscular from work. I will live in beautiful places and feel real love all around me. I won’t need anything. Everything will be in its place. I don’t need you. I will live earned this life. I will live a glamorous life, to me. I will have worked hard to understand what “impossible” truly means. I will have experimented deeply and inquired at every juncture. I will have folded and imagined. My questions will have made me. 

International women’s day

Everyday in the world today is a day

How to be a dancer

Written on February 13th 2024

If you could be a process which one would you be?

I remember feeling so lucky.

I stayed in bed all day today, leaving only to take the bus to get four bags of Trader Joe’s takis. I’m curious about what rest becomes on days like these and how skipping things makes me feel. I didn’t go to Pageant yoga. My mom called me about going to India and China after we go on a family trip to Korea in May. She sounded so angry at me. 

I think I’m in love with someone. I’m enamored with cooking and kitchen culture. There's something so dazzling about making beauty and doing it fast. Barely having enough time. Time brimming at its edges, pouring out of its center, my hands moving faster than my synapses to catch the overflow. I think this is why I Iike the busy days more. They’re hard but I prefer it to the lazy ones. I think that if given the choice I will always choose comfort over discomfort. 

I feel that I’ve been making a series of social blunders whenever I’m around people lately. Chidi and I have been doing this thing on public transportation where we both wear our own respective headphones and show each other what song to play next, making sure to hit play at the exact same time on the exact same song so that we’re inhabiting the exact same subjectivity. When it comes to something as imprecise and arbitrary as metropolitan life, the closest-you-can-get becomes the absolute. I love being friends this way: being at the same time. I value this. I am trying to be the kind of friend to others that I want for myself.

I’m giving a mini dharma talk to a group in my meditation teacher training. My partner is a 53-year-old Taiwanese American woman named Bonnie. I feel young around her. She takes her time and can’t be messed with. She breathes loudly in her headphones as if to take up space. I want to be her mother. 

Everything just continues all the time. I love my gymnastics job. I come up with lessons on the train in the Notes app and then write them on the white board in the gymnasium. After lunch all of the kids' farts smell the same. Institutional flatulence. I love them. I’m working on the progress reports. I want to make them brave. I want to teach them that they have bodies. I want them to love me. I want them to see their bodies in space. To feel their flying bodies suspended by time and in various standing, sitting, rolling, turning, balancing, springing positions. I want them to be well, like I always say. 

I’ve been living for Trisha Brown class. Shelly Senter teaches us Alexander technique. I learned that our legs are in front of our torsos. Our heads end at the soft palate in the back of our throat, where our neck and spine begin. Habit and culture bring our torsos forward, making us forget our legs are in front of our torsos. We form kinesthetic pathways through habitual synaptic connections made in relation to the sound and sensations of the words "head" and "neck." We slouch and fall in one direction. We forget that everything is always and. Never that. It’s paradox. Alexander technique and Trisha Brown’s mentality is I think a practice of non-doing. Of emptying the center. Of release through structure. Of progressively distal causes and effects, constantly transposing and disappearing. Language is involved. I love the class and the movement so much. 

I love being a dancer even when I skip yoga to lay in bed and watch videos of people making beautiful things on Youtube. This is part of being a dancer. This dancer. I forgive myself because my dance training has taught me how. 

Gymnastics Class

You did so well today
I love you so much I could eat you
Five seconds longer
Just five more seconds
Don’t ruin it
Stop what you’re doing and sit down calmly without throwing your body to the ground
You’re doing great
I’m so proud of you sweetie
You did so well today
I saw you working hard
Thank you for your beautiful work
Thank you for your beautiful work
Thank you for your beautiful work
You’re getting so much better at bridges
Steady your body
I got you
I’m right here
Now push
Is it okay if I support you hips here?
I worry about your head
Are you guys okay?
Do you want to take your coat off?
I’ll call on steady bodies
Thank you for your attention
Just work on it
I’m sorry sweetie
Do you need a Band Aid?
Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to 
Match up your feet and hands 
Class is almost over
There will be no choice time today
I think we can have choice time today
Let’s have some choice time
Tight tuck position
Stop
I’m not kidding
I’m being serious
I’ll take questions at the end
Any questions?
You guys did so great today
Good job
Amazing
I’m so proud of you
Yes
No
Try again
Make a wise choice for your body
Please stop
Everyone look at me
Arms straight and strong
Bend your front leg
Send your heels toward the ground as you lift your pelvis toward the sky
This looks great
And
Trust walk back

Babies

Walk somewhere to anywhere

Scratch surfaces 

Carry heavy objects made of paper and plastic

Metal and knowledge

You are everything you desire

Your adventures dream about you

I talked to angels tonight

Everyone told us to write it

I know moments are stable because I stand on them without falling

I don’t want you to fall on your head, or break your back, or forget your earmuffs, or think I don’t mean it when I say darling

I wasn’t looking

I only need a place to work and people to stretch with at night

We need to look at you because they need to see us

Tomorrow is a choice you made before your life began

Conversation throws the wheel towards the curve

Your spine holds me all the way up

I lift your hips so you don’t fall on your head

I just want the best for you