I started hanging out with a bunch of spiritual people recently. They are following the meditations of a loud and kind of hilarious guy named Joe Dispenza. One of them said that it’s nearly impossible to be creative if your energy is blocked so they do a lot of *chakra work. Mostly I am interested in forming friendships as I get tired of censoring myself around atheists. Strangely, a kind of energy is being released in my body since I started with them a few weeks ago. Among other things, this means I’m learning to Lindy.
Walking Meditations
Every week we do a “walking” meditation in our local park. We all listen to one of Joe’s guided meditations which involves standing and then beginning to walk around to some music and guided messaging. Yesterday I just couldn’t stop dancing my way through it. I had so much energy and it wanted to MOVE! Random dancing…through the park…in public – crazy! Standing in the park with your eyes closed is bad enough but dancing around?
The Lindy Hop
The Lindy Hop is a swing dancing style that originated with African Americans in Harlem, New York in the 1920s. It is energetic with your feet constantly moving – absolutely mesmerizing to watch real dancers do it. I first became aware of it from some clip that came across my feed. It was from the classic 1941 movie, Hellzapoppin’. Of course, the people in these movies are athletes of the most extreme but boy! wouldn’t it be cool to move like that even a little bit?!
I started practising the Lindy by myself at home with no one to see my pitiful attempts at it after the second walking meditation. I’m not sure why I began but I’ve made it part of my daily routine now. The video I practise is just shy of three minutes long so I aim to do it five times in a row…then six…and so on. There is a group here in town that teaches the Lindy but I’m not ready for that yet – the class is a full 55 minutes long. Honestly, after three minutes of Lindy practise, I’m winded. But it is so much fun!!!
Where Did All the Fun Go?
Maybe this dancing is a manifestation of my realization that, after all the sadness and sorrow of the past few years, I needed more fun in my life. I also asked for new friends since the Wolfpack blew apart during Covid (interestingly, it had nothing to do with me. I can’t remember if I’ve written about the Wolfpack before. If not, just ask me).
You Should Be Dancing
The other thing that I’ve noticed since I started hanging out with these guys is that I’ve been able to “let go” just a smidge more lately. I’ve been working on this for nearly 10 years now. One of the women talked about the importance of just “allowing” what we feel and that resonated with me. I can see that I always try to “control” rather than to “allow.” Even my grief. I know I am absolutely ridiculous about clinging to things.
What Is Lost
Like Marjorie. My beloved, homely little Marjorie that I took in only as a companion to my “real” cat, Mr. Darcy. She won my heart and I loved her as purely as I ever loved anyone. It hurts to even write her name. Her death in May of 2020 was my fault because she was following me as I walked to work – I had been running late and left her outside instead of taking the few minutes to put her safely back inside. Truthfully, I did not see her following me. It was only after a frantic and hopeless night of searching that I found out she’d been hit and killed by a car.
For weeks I cried in gasping breaths the moment I got home and realized she wasn’t there to greet me. I would find bits of her hair – on cushions or windowsills or hidden on a towel in the closet. Carefully I gathered them up and collected them into one pile. As if I could recreate her. I will not tell you how long I kept this pile of fur.
Shhh
I’m not very good at letting go of anything – memories, people I once knew, scraps or bits and pieces of paper, etc. I still have dolls from when I was a kid, hidden in old boxes with other childhood memorabilia. Things that meant so much to me – that comforted me the many times I felt so alone in the world – how could I abandon them just because they got old? Or I did.
Recently I was able to give away nearly every reminder of the guy I dated for over three years. This is a victory and I feel good about it. Of course, the fact that he happily moved on helps a lot.
Not Him Again
My ex, too, has happily moved on but I still struggle with letting go of our relationship. This was brought painfully home the other day when I had to have a filling removed and a crown installed. Simple, right?
It took three tries, braces for two years, a crying jag, and 27 years to make it happen – and it’s still not finished!
For some reason that I do not fully understand, I equated this ugly, huge, pinioned filling to my ex-husband. Maybe because that tooth broke when I was pregnant with my daughter and we had reconciled. Our relationship had solidified, like this filling in my mouth: messy but sturdier than ever. We had a renewed purpose in raising our daughter and were both determined to do it the best we could.
This was the emotional landscape on the day the dentist told me that he would only be able to apply a temporary fix and that I would need a crown. I felt so much relief when he told me it could be fixed at all.
27 Years Later
It was ugly and quite visible so when I got a job with dental coverage, I tried to have it fixed. It turned out my bite was “off.” Hence the braces. By the time my bite was corrected, my marriage had fallen apart, I had lost that job and had no dental coverage. Once over the years, I saved up the money, only to have two other teeth that needed emergency crowns. (Here I’d like to point out that I have always looked after my teeth, flossing daily, getting them cleaned regularly, etc., but I broke a few teeth doing a skid on a bike when I was eight.)
Last year I found out that with my First Nations heritage, I would have coverage for my teeth. It took nine months for me to get my FN card. Then, after finally making the dreaded appointment, while sitting in the dental chair with the freezing taking hold, I was told my card didn’t work. I flew out of that office with a mixture of annoyance and relief.
Another Tie Removed
Well, this week my card worked. The old filling that had been with me for over 27 years was unceremoniously ground off and a temporary crown installed.
I wish I could tell you that there were no tears, no regrets, no near cancellations of this appointment. It was messy here, at my house in the hours before I left for the dentist. But I followed through, brushing my teeth for the last time with this old, ugly filling in my mouth. The one older than my daughter that was a physical representation of the relationship I no longer had.
Fat, Drunk, & Stupid is No Way To Go Through Life, Son
I came home and went out for my usual walk around the neighbourhood, numb from the freezing. My eyesight is still dismal (another story) and I thought I saw something on the sidewalk. I bent down to examine what appeared to be a small, dark brown lid of some kind with only one word on it: bold.
I laughed the one-sided laugh of a recent dental patient and carried on home.
There’s really only one thing left to do when you get a message like that: put on some music and practise your Lindy.
*From Healthline: “Chakra (cakra in Sanskrit) means “wheel” and refers to energy points in your body. They are thought to be spinning disks of energy that should stay “open” and aligned, as they correspond to bundles of nerves, major organs, and areas of our energetic body that affect our emotional and physical well-being.”
