Irondale Day 10

Oh boy.

I kinda got the wind knocked out of my blogging diary sails after last week’s disappearing oeuvre post. It was my greatest piece, it was the entry that was gonna launch me into… more mildly delusional daydreams of grandeur?

Maybe.

Maybe I’ve been incredibly busy and have a heck of a lot to process.

Maybe it’s been more of a challenge here because not only am I neck deep in an hugely challenging training process, physically mentally and artistically, but because I am also back in a city I love with a whole bunch of people I’ve missed and places I’ve been dreaming of since the last visit.

In Saratoga it was nothing but the training and the people you trained with. You ate slept sweat the work. You dreamed it.

In NYC I wasn’t sequestered away from the greater world but I was in a city I didn’t know and frankly, I was broke and still exhausted from Saratoga, and it wasn’t quite a week.

In Halifax it’s not so easy and the work I’m encountering here in so many ways is both the most rewarding and the most challenging. Every morning we spend three hours doing conditioning, a ton of ab work and anatomy lessons via Pilates, followed by tumbling a little acrobatics and some ‘light’ partner work. I’m closer than ever to this elusive cartwheel and though it ain’t there yet I’m closer than I’ve ever been. That’s pretty cool.

Today, after having had to sit out the later half of the morning due to my not so stellar back, I had a really good afternoon doing mask work. I felt good about my work, I felt like I was open to the world and that I was honestly and simply playing.

Today, I was told that I have everything one needs for this work, that it was without doubt that I have the necessary facilities to stand on a stage and control time and space and that I should be doing so, just that perhaps lack of confidence might be standing in the way. It would seem that I am more than capable of doing this work, that I have an affinity for this craft, I just have a stubborn psyche is refusing to come along for the ride.

This past weekend was the Tall Ships Festival in Halifax. Embarrassing disclosure moment: I saw the first masts rise over the buildings as I was walking down to the harbour to take the ferry to Dartmouth and exclaimed, to the world at large, “they really ARE tall ships”. Yup, that’s me folks! Anyway, this weekend was kind of a crazy schism between “Jessie, what kind of crazy are you getting yourself into” and “this is the best weekend ever”. The days were just one wonderful life and character affirming adventure after another while the nights involved a series of selfish decisions I knew were the wrong ones to make and yet I allowed my weaker self to prevail. By Sunday I was feeling not the least bit ashamed of and disappointed with my nocturnal activities but I wasn’t able to wallow because of the balance of the daytime glory. Each put the other into perspective, yes I am not pleased with a lot of what happened that weekend but I find myself more resolved on some key personal relationships and am seeing some history a bit clearer.

What’s the point.

I think I’m equating this weekend with this work because, once again, we’re back with that old witch Fear. That my weekend days were beyond fabulous because I wholeheartedly opened myself to the world and gladly accepted the propositions that came my way. That my weekend nights were less than I might have hoped for myself because not only did I refuse to listen to my gut but I might as well have thrown away the past few years of growth and learning for the sake of … well, frankly, nothing.

I need to TRUST myself. I need to stop assuming so much negativity and horrible mutation on my part. It’s just not the case. I need to do this so that I can move on from this so that I can start to perform, on stage and off, as fully and grandly as I can feel bursting inside of me. I am the only one in my way right now and even I don’t get why.

On the plus side I got another week and a half to figure it all out!