I have been here over a week and just about let go of habitual London tensions and speed and slowed down to my island life. Instead of charging about the highways and byways with dog in tow hoping to get fitter and lose weight (my jeans didn’t seem to fit me too well when I was struggling into them to travel in) I am now walking happily engrossed in the beautiful spring flowers and natural events that surround me, allowing the day to unfold as it will.
As Kafka says ‘Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.’
This is quoted in a marvellous book called The Actor’s Art and Craft. William Esper teaches the Meisner Technique by William Esper and Damon DiMarco, pub. by Anchor Books, available through Amazon. I brought it with me for the plane and coach and Cat, and am still savouring every moment. It makes it so clear how AT can help in the actor getting out of the way of her/himself, to allow something else to happen. My colleague Aileen at ArtsEd suggested it to me as I have 4 sessions left with MA’s where I can really play and experiment with them, and this will be a great foundation, so they really understand at last that AT is not all about posture or bodies but a profound psycho-physical experience in living.
Natural events that happened in the last week: meeting a snake on the path, a big black grass snake basking in the sun, curled back on itself and having to shout NO SPIROS!! very loudly and run speedily after my dog who was also running towards it barking and hoping to play with it/savage it or something equally dangerous. The poor snake slid off into the undergrowth at all the noise and I breathed a sigh of relief and cuddled Spiros so he knew I wasn’t really cross.
Today we met a very dozy rat that refused to move from the path skirting an olive grove. I held on to Spiros’ collar just in case he tried to have a go, as it occurred to me perhaps the little animal wasn’t well. Spiros was poisoned 18 months ago from insecticide and has had a dicky tummy ever since. They use strong insecticide sometimes on their olive trees.
A few days ago Spiros snuffled out two pheasant from where they were hiding in long grass. Don’t know who was more surprised – him, me or the birds! They lumbered off into flight Spiros wagging his tail and laughing.
On my walks with the dog, I spend some time stopping – either for chi kung practice or to lie down in semi supine. Spiros is used to this now and doesn’t winge too much, but curls up nearby until I have finished. It is very special to do this practice in such a beautiful place.
I have also been thinking about the axis vertebrae in the neck. It is the end of the ‘fixed’ spinal column. I mean that below there are no freely moveable joints, just firm discs, that allow the spine to distort according to our use and movement. And then sitting on its prong is the infinitely moveable atlas which swivels to let our head rotate , and on top of that the skull sitting on the fluid of the joints and balancing itself. Remembering that as I walk somehow changes how the head is sitting, and my spine lengthens. I get a bigger sense of my trapezius too, the neck as it were connected all the way down my thoracic spine. I had a model of the axis sitting on my shelf at home at an odd angle and it was this which set up a new exploration in my thinking and experience .
Today I actually gave a lesson – to Charlie my neighbour here who is out for a few days and who is a long term student of mine. He first came for lessons here some 11 years ago, just wandered down the road and happened to see me on the balcony and said ‘Are you Penny? Do you do Alexander lessons?’ He had read my advert somewhere and come over on a whim hoping to find me and some accommodation. We were able to put him up next door and he has since bought the place when it went on the market a couple of years ago.
So Charlie and I had a great lesson which started as we walked to a quiet sunny spot at the end of the village, and played with balance, intention, allowing, staying present in a unified field of attention - with a view to die for, and blue sky space over our heads to direct up to.....and to include more and more, and still be open and available even delighting in the light of the green leaves as the sun set over Kalovoulos and the sea turned silvery, without narrowing to this or losing our selves.
Two more people booked up for the workshops this summer, so I hope they have equally extraordinary moments as we work together. I have been working on the computer quite a lot, answering questions for them, helping them book flights and booking accommodation for them, and also for Becky who I Alexander trained with 18 years ago at David Gorman’s Centre for Training in North London. She is coming over this June with her husband and 14 year old daughter, and haven’t seen any of them for years. She teaches AT in the context of singing lessons in Cape Town. I am hoping a couple of contacts will come up trumps for a very low cost house for a week. It will take some searching but I think it is possible.
My other joy of course is to be with my darling Mo who waits and watches my London brain slowly change gear – siga, siga...It helped in a funny way that I got a funny tummy for a few days. Just wanted to doze in the sun and not do anything very much. I thought it was some well water that I had filled my bottle with, but I understand there is a bug going round and sadly Mo now seems to have it. He is upstairs sleeping and I will join him soon. I do find the bed here INCREDIBLY uncomfortable for my back, and move around a lot in the night trying in vain to get comfortable. Not helped that I am squidged between heavy dog and man. Thank goodness for my AT.
In contrast I sadly heard that a neighbour up the road found the operation on her back made it even worse and is now mostly in a wheel chair. She had some relief from a few lessons with me the year before but it was unlikely the condition of narrowed nerve channels was going to get better completely. Hmmm....... She wasn’t looking forward to the operation either. However, she has an indominitable spirit and went on an Antarctic cruise with her husband at Xmas and is planning to have her 70th birthday her in Alonnisos next month.
