top kill prayer dance

"What we must do,

I suppose,

is to hope the world keeps its balance;

what we are to do, however,

with our hearts

waiting and watching - truly

I do not know."

Mary Oliver

This is NOT yesterdays dance... which would have been an expression of my anger and rage over the Gulf of Mexico disaster... Yesterday, when I got in my car it beeped at me with the message on my dashboard saying 'please refuel.' As I stood by my car controlling the oil gushing, not into the sea, but into my car, I couldn't help feel that my daily actions are also responsible for the disaster in the Gulf... Yesterday, my camera malfunctioned...

This is my dance from today... BP started the 'Top Kill' procedure yesterday and today, we were told, we should know if the procedure is successful (what exactly are they KILLING in this process of filling the hole?). My anger has not subsided, but there is an inner feeling of hopefulness... hopeful that the hemorrhaging of our precious Mother Earth will subside, so that the healing of our waters may begin....

"Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon's reflection." Rumi

On this day of the full moon I was inspired to dance by the ocean to do a dance prayer... I was feeling full of images of the blood-like oil hemorrhaging out into the sea for days, until last night when the images that were being shown from the live web-cams 1000's of feet beneath the sea were ones that depicted a lighter shade of 'fluid'... has the oil stopped pluming? Was this the 'mud?' Was the 'Top Kill' process working?

Still feeling so helpless, I feel grateful to have this dance practice as taught by my mentor, Momo, that enables me to embody my inner body weather, and express it in a dance expression...

I grabbed a spray of red rhodedendrons from our yard and headed to the seashore... Dancing with the shawl felt like an embodiment of the images of the relentless beige fluid pouring into the sea today... then I was visualizing the ending of the oil / mud gushing and the closing of the gaping hole - visualizing the hemorrhaging of the Earth's wound stopping so the next phase of dealing with this disaster can begin....

The red flowers reminded me so much of the bleeding of the Earth, and the Earth herself as our 1st chakra is related to the color red and the element earth. And as I held the flower spray up to my belly, it connected me to the ocean within my own body, within the basin of my pelvis...

The embodiment of the oil gushing from the earth into the sea also felt like it cracked me open - for the first time since hearing of this disaster, I wept... Tonight I wept while watching the news - T Boone Pickens on Anderson Cooper saying he did not feel hopeful that 'Top Kill' would be successful and professor of physics, Michio Kaku on Keith Olbermann saying that there is enough oil in this reserve under the sea to keep gushing at this rate for years and that if this process does not work, the situation could get worse, with a new rupture, or ruptures that could be created by 'Top Kill'. I wept seeing the coverage of today's hearings into the Gulf oil spill by the U.S. House's Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment when Rep. Charlie Melancon of Louisiana tried unsuccessfully to fight back tears when he shared that "the scale and the scope of this disaster is larger than one can imagine." He described constituents "watching this slow-motion tragedy unfolding in front of them... Our culture is threatened, our coastal economy is threatened, everything I know and love is at risk..." I wept when I heard President Obama speak of his daughter, Mailia, 11 years old, asking him - "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?" I wept with images of the emergency teams cleaning the oil slicked birds and after hearing that over 200 dead sea turtles have washed up on the beaches in the gulf and this is only the beginning...

My whole being feels devastated. How do we live with this tragedy, this uncertainty, right now, this moment?

A dance prayer for the hemorrhaging to stop so the healing can begin...


Thank you for viewing my blog... I hope it may inspire you in some way, perhaps to dance your own prayers, or in whatever other way you feel resonates with you, for the healing of the Gulf of Mexico...

Lee

If you double-click the film below you can view the film without the right-side being cut off. You can turn the film off here so you don't hear the music from both films :~)

Music: Claude Debussey

Visit my butoh mento's inspiring blog here: Maureen 'Momo' Freehill