1. Preamble
It is star-shaped and yellow and so delicate as to
feel like a miniscule spray of mist. I am on my three-year-old haunches,
mesmerised by its beauty. She speaks to me. She says she is from the stars and
she asks me to look after her. I tell her that I will visit her every day. I
keep my promise.
Then I sense the caretaker’s wife standing behind me.
She is big and pregnant. I often play with her other children, who are older
than I am.
She says, “What are you doing?”
“It’s a flower,” I say.
“It is a weed,” she replies. “We must pull it out.”
She is gentle. I don’t remember pulling out the
flower. I remember agreeing with the caretaker, but I don’t remember pulling
out the weed.
It has remained forever in me.
***
2. Reflective Notes
5th February 2023
First, we did a RAIN meditation, listening to Tara Brach.
Recognise Allow Investigate Nurture
I remembered the feeling of following my mother’s
back, as she refused to turn her face to me, embarrassed by me, & me
feeling cast out, unwanted, unworthy. And I knew I must re-mother myself.
Then we walked in the lovely garden & I felt the
moist grass under my soles, which have become so tough from all my barefoot
walking. And I nudged the driftwood dinosaur, who looks away, into the foliage,
& I found a little clearing near there, where I could hide – my bright gear
did not camouflage me! But everybody was quiet and discreet.
Then we danced. It was strange at first with the words
Cher was reading over the music, I am so sensitive to words spoken or written.
But I realised this was a time to be more conscious. I breathed in the colour
spring-green, which felt delightful. Then, when Cher told us to breathe in red
– that was at once instinctive, it pulls me to feel so primitive, or primal,
& lastly I found or was given a luminous blue sphere, Cher spoke about
holding a seed, & my very beautiful sphere became a blue flower, & I
remembered a tiny flower I once loved between the cracks of the paving, which
spoke to me of the stars. It had a voice, & I danced her.
***
3. Sharing
Each participant in the Journey through dance read
their reflections. How many different worlds had combined in the studio, each
one contained within her body! Some felt that they had freed themselves from
reining in the love they feel for others and the world; another felt aware that
she was releasing barriers she tended to put up, for fear of losing her
independence; yet another travelled through her father into history, wars,
complex family heritage rippling out into, or from, her individual self.
When I read my reflective notes, Claire said, “You are
the flower.”
“A weed in a crack,” I replied sardonically.
“Yes,” said Claire, “and look how much it has influenced
you.”
***
4. Renewal
The next day, I walked along the beach near where I
live. Suddenly the wind breathed an emission of positive memories of my mother into
me, surprising and elating. The Journey through dance had wiped away an
ancient, stagnant grief as if it were only a greasy mark on a glass. I no
longer needed to think of all the wonderful things, whereby my mother influenced
me during my life – I could feel them
all again! The splendid books she piled on me; her not minding to walk in the
rain; her irrepressible cheekiness and big-mouth-laughter.
I don’t need diligently or desperately to list or
remember the bouncy, flowering weeds in the cracks of my mother’s persona
anymore – they, too, are in me, abundantly so.
Even better, her back is no longer turned towards me,
as I turn to face myself.
“You are allowed to be brave. You know how to swallow
your fear and breathe fire with it!”
***
5. Blue fire
I take up where I left off. I return to that point
where I gave up on the little flowering weed pushing up between the paving
stones. She was yellow like the sun. The Journey through dance gave me a blue
sphere to hold: was that her sky?
Where will you lead me, little star-flower weed?
I don’t know why, but the words “blue fire” follow me,
as well as your colour, yellow.
I’ll wait and see.
***
6. Forgiveness
I ask forgiveness of all those readers, whom I
disappointed, because this is not a story about dagga.
***
– Silke Heiss, Sunrise-on-Sea,
February 2023
