DeGraw

Sometimes I rely too much on feelings.
Reeling in the emotions that swarm and swirl and make me dizzy.
Busy-ness taking up time instead of confronting my true nature.
Captured by controlling desires to always know what comes next.
Perplexed and crumbling in the cross-hairs of worry and furiously second-guessing every move.
Searching to prove my status among the successful and stressed beyond awareness of the others around me.
"Belief makes things real, makes things feel, feel alright."
But tonight, I wander, I worry, I wonder...
Will I ever find a way to know contentment without complacency?

Peaches

Flirtations in a peach tree, under the shadow of a giant
Precariously balancing adventure and consequence, without tipping the hand too far
Threatening to run away on a fugitive train, leaving behind breadcrumbs to find our way back

Lost in a peach tree, winding through the trails that old money left behind
Curious and hoping that interest begets friendship with no casualties along the way
Long and rambling vines, too tangled to hold on to in the darkest night

The endless peach tree that follows wherever you go, teasing and taunting the lost
Black eyes and alibis, both just a facade. Tucked away on a rolling hill
The wrong whiskey accounting for the queen in the sand

H.S.D.L.B.M.F.

Hidden or hiding.  Hopeful or heightened.
Sprained or spasm.  Sung or saddened.
Damned or defeated.  Danced or depleted.
Lonely or loaned.  Lingered or letting.
Blamed or beautiful.  Buoyant or bountiful.
Maimed or misled.  Mirrored or misread.
Found or flailing. Falling or forgotten.
  

Work in progress

Ok I'm owning up to it...I failed the blog challenge.  I'm making no excuses.  I knew how busy I am when I agreed to be part of this, yet still thought I could pull it off.  My problem, when it really comes down to it, is balance.  I do a lot of things.  And even of the things that are all somewhat related, each has their own set of priorities, requirements and obligations.  I think usually what happens is that something comes up and I have to focus all (or at least most) of my energy on one particular thing to the extent that the rest of the things I do fall by the wayside and suffer....and then I have to play catch up and let others things take the back burner....and the cycle just keeps going.  I know that I am an extremist by nature...meaning, that when I think something is wrong I go to the complete far opposite extreme to attempt to fix it...which of course only creates other new and exciting problems....aaaaannd you see where I'm going with this.  

Last summer (2009) I was asked to set a piece on a group of dancers for the the Oklahoma Contemporary Dance Festival.  At the time I was in a walking cast for an ankle injury that I had made worse by not taking time off when I should have, and was, in the most literal sense, dealing with issues of balance.  Below is the link to a video of the piece (the quality is bad, but you can get the gist), and what I wrote that was included as a program note:

"I believe in constantly striving to find balance. There is danger in living at either extreme of almost anything. Whether true balance can ever be attained is something I have yet to find out, but I believe if I ever quit trying to find it then I will truly be lost."


It always kind of weirds me out to read stuff that I wrote long enough ago that I feel I'm in a different mindset now...especially when it's really similar to something I'm currently dealing with.  It kind of makes me feel like I don't make as much progress as I like to think I do.  But I guess that's even the point of what I was saying both then and now...I have to always be working towards becoming who I need to be.  Maybe it's not possible to really figure things out in this life, but if we give up trying to then there's really no point in moving on at all.