How to Love a Wolf: No Day Counter, July 25, 2019

How to Love a Wolf: No Day Counter, July 25, 2019

The time has come for me to say farewell to my beloved Mt. Airy home and neighborhood in Philadelphia. My grief is big and real; I would be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge a wish to return. This neighborhood—my lovely apartment, the co-op corner, my cherished pool, the 'juice place' that popped up like magic across the street, countless walks in and around the Wissahickon—has been my home, comfort, and joy for the toughest and probably most important seven years of my adult life thus far. Yet from the start I recognized the specialness of this place and how well it fits my heart, body, and soul. During these years, mostly in an introverted enclave of daily practice and writing my dissertation, I've sustained and nurtured my artistic 'home' in Chicago, plus new dance/life relationships in Detroit and Ohio, meaning hundreds of trips and relocations (sometimes a weekend, sometimes nine-months) on trains, planes, and automobiles. I'm grateful for all of these connections, and blessed especially by the people I've come to love, or love more deeply. I've always returned to my cozy spot with the red maple out front, waking (and walking) to encounter people who know me/my face/my coffee order greeting me with, let's say, a "hey, how you doin'? Large, with room?"

I'm undone by the thought of leaving, a departure now manifest in the act of sorting and tossing and beginning to imagine the melancholy hopefulness of unpacking in a new spot, one that evokes a panorama of emotions—inspiration, delight, trepidation, confidence, worry, resolve—in the mix.

My goal in writing my dissertation was to allow myself to be changed in (and by) the process. The phrase 'be careful what you wish for' comes to mind. I find myself in perpetual liminality, oxymoronic in that, of course, we are all always in transition from birth to death and a thousand micro-transitions in between. This transition reminds me of puberty: and who looks back on puberty with unmitigated delight? The messiness. The tragic realization that there is no going back. The curves, folds, eruptions of growth—mind and flesh, both— of purpose, and, yes, desire set against the stultifying gazes of power and patriarchy. Willfulness and resolve winding around my insides like a snake, without patience, without plan, hoping in this lazy ground for a readiness to spiral, unfurl, and, yes, even to strike, before being stomped out by the boot of time.