Wednesday, May 13, 2009

We are designed to be migrational. 

We Pans narrans, can't take the heat of summer, nor can we bear deep winters, if not well dug in and provisioned. 
Our special skill is adaptation, we move, we migrate. 

The Karankawa of South Texas were reknowned as direly vicious killers who bathed in alligator fat and ate anything they weren't closely related to. 
This is how you have to live, to survive in Texas. 
If the heat doesn't drive you barking mad, the heat will.. wait, the insects will.. wait, the parasites will.. wait, the .. well, if you aren't mad, you aren't paying attention, in Texas. 

Not paying attention, is its own form of madness. 

I do pay attention, to the deep pulses and textures of where I am, and what I am doing. 
I live in a kinesthetic world of sheeps' wool, leaf textures, and the skin, muscle, bone & fascial textures, the kinesthetic world of my clients. 
This is how I root. 
This is why I love to work with farmers, those who live in intimacy with the land. They will know, in their skin, to their bones, what to do and how to do it. 
I will pick it up, not just from asking them about what they love, but how their bodies react to it. 
I learn the lay, the ley, if you will, of the land, from the bodies I touch. 
If they have been here for generations, that's information. 
If they came here from Southern California, and settled deeply, that's also information. 

It's normal, to tell you, that I have an idea of how the season will go, because I chatted with a client about it. 
It's not so normal, to tell you that I gained a sense of the season, from the neurological ripples though their bodies as they talked about it. 

But I do. 
And it seems normal, like reading the phone book. 

My sense of rootedness, my need to grow things and see them fruit is one sense of a way to survive. 
My sense of adventure, my ability to fit into and fall in love with other cultures, my curiosity & intelligence, is another. 

This is a good place to be, but I am curious, as to where it will lead. 

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