Welcome to Vera Monstera! Movement is Everywhere. Step into an embodied world where life springs from the power of play and slow-osity. What’s that? It’s like velocity, but instead of speeding in one direction, we dive into spacious, internal rhythms. No destinations, but lots of sights to see. To my subscribers…thanks for keeping Vera energy alive! It means the world that you’re here. Feel free to share with friends…
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When I’m walking, I’m not a good person or a bad person. I am a whole body moving through space. I am not lost in time. I am time, measured footfall by footfall.
Another lifetime ago, I was in grad school for dance. I have an MFA in Dance which means I’m a master of the ephemeral, the unreachable. A master of things that don’t last, but linger.
During my first year, I was in comp class with Renée. Comp like composition. Choreography. Putting things together purposefully with rigor and the element of surprise. Renée was fond of what she called “bonbons,” little gems of dance candy that radiated, with crystalline precision, an idea in physical form. A bonbon might be short, but it pops with such force it brings you to your feet.
Back in those days, to facilitate my pursuit of bonbons, I walked everywhere. To classes and rehearsals and back. To the office to file articles (that Renée clipped by hand) or to the guest artist apartment to clean it (guess who left all the wet towels heaped in a corner of the bathroom? I can’t tell you).
All of my hours were filled with the work of movement. If I wasn’t dancing, I was writing about dance or watching dance. And if I wasn’t doing one of those things, I was on my way, walking. Transitions were chock full of movement. Whether I was gearing up or decompressing—I was on the move. Left, right, left right. On one of these walks, this phrase popped across my mind like skywriting:
“I like to go walking. Is it the moving that stirs my brain? I like to go walking. Is it the moving that stirs my brain? I like to go walking…”
And so on.
Cold Illinois days sometimes required double pairs of pants and a repetitive ear worm to get me through. “I like to go walking…”—left, right, inhale, exhale—“is it the moving that stirs my brain? I like to go walking…”
I walked that phrase right into comp class. It became a sketch for a homework assignment. When it was my turn to stand up on the Marley floor, I chanted my new phrase in a repetitive trance while my feet walked a floor pattern underneath. I was thinking out loud with my body. I felt self-conscious, an astronaut floating, looking back at the earth with glee and regret. The moment was all at once emperor’s-new-clothes (“are they buying that this is dance?”), imposter’s syndrome (“is this an artistic scam?”) and a lifeline (“yep, I’m on to something.”)
The actual movement I did in class that day is lost to time. But the phrase has stuck with me all these years. “I like to go walking. Is it the movement that stirs my brain?” I always thought it was an unfinished fragment. But maybe that’s the point. It’s an ear worm and an invitation. A call out to the world that calls me back in.
When I think about it now, my two little sentences are their own bonbon. Wait—hear me out. You’re right, this statement is a desecration of Renée’s original sacred definition of a bonbon—choreography at its most triumphant and concise (a well-packed haiku, a perfect quip). And yes, it’s a desecration of Renée’s own genius choreography that exuded exquisite bonbon-ness every time. And it’s true, I have never really achieved true bonbon-itude. Even when I approach it, I go on and on for too long.
Right, yes. Get to the point.
I know my unfinished phrase doesn’t make me a master of language (or movement for that matter). But the bonbon quality of my phrase is the sheer motion of it. “I like to go walking” takes me somewhere. Physically. Emotionally. It reminds me that I actually like something. It forgives me the sin of not walking and opens the gate to step out. I just have to put one foot in front of the other.
Chanting this bonbon is a portal directly back to those sidewalks in Urbana that I haven’t walked for, oh, twenty years. It’s a portal back to things I started and things yet to come.
It’s still true, you know. I do like to go walking. More than ever. It’s a lifeline. These days, I walk the hill-filled, forest-y streets of my neighborhood. But this past summer, I took a long hiatus from walking alone and instead took walks to the pool with my kid. We walked the dog and made up stories about our characters, The Witch Kids. She is much better at crafting these mystery stories than me. Writing took over my attention, too, growing as wild as the summer weeds I failed to pull.
Sometimes a break is much needed. It’s back-to-school time for my kid. And for me, that means more walking, moving and writing. It’s nice to return to something. I love the pull of Fall and I’m feeling downright academic about sitting down with weedy words. I’ve even pulled a few actual weeds this past week. But not all of them. I noticed some are the beginnings of trees. I noticed some are baby milkweed stalks scratching the surface of the grass. All of this unfinished work is under the surface, ready to be noticed.
Dare I say that walking and moving are the lungs of these essays.
Left, right, left, right. As I walk out into nature, I walk back into myself. This neighborhood is packed with botanical thrills. I recently heard poet David Whyte talk about the term “genius loci” in an interview (yes, with Krista Tippett). The word genius, in ancient times, described places. Genius loci is the spirit of a place. Walking under so many old trees, I feel this. Whyte says our genius now as people is not a hoity-toity intellectual ability, but, “just the way everything is met in you.” It’s innate…
“Human genius lies in the geography of the body and its conversation with the world.”
I can finish a walk. It’s possible to put my key in the lock and turn it. But walks are, really, never finished. The grand project of walking itself is an unfinished endeavor. I can’t win it or achieve it. This is comforting as I have trouble finishing projects. My life is full of unfinished fragments—notebook scribbles, voice memos, video ditties, post-its, photographs, paragraphs. I can look at that fullness as beautiful or chaotic. Or maybe more rightly said—beautiful chaos. I’m in the middle.
I’ve learned (partially, imperfectly) that, when I return to something after a hiatus, being harsh with myself is the fastest track to never doing it again. It sucks the joy out of it. And anyway, the work is happening underneath when I’m not looking (hidden, composting a la Natalie Goldberg). Just look at those beginner trees and baby milkweed stalks.
Brrrreeeeeaaaaaatttttthhhhhe.
My kid and I have been getting a kick out of rewatching the show Raising Dion. In it, there are super heroes in the form of “powered people,” regular humans who gain supernatural abilities. Good fights evil, over and over. There’s a “powered person” named Janelle whose super power is…TBD. She’s a teen whose trouble is she keeps blowing things up. But then, when the pressure is really on—cliffhanger!—and the stakes are significantly high—spoiler!—she is able to sweep objects into the air, swing them around with her mind, and break them into their most fundamental elements. Super chemistry!
In my un-super way, I feel like this. Throwing ideas up and moving them around, breaking them down. Destroying them. Picking up the pieces. This happens best when I’m moving. I think in motion. I think we all do, but we forget that. Driving in a car or a train, pedaling, wheeling—it’s motion that shakes up our brains (because brains belong to bodies). Moving is its own kind of intelligence. I think of an octopus, moving and feeling all at once. Every arm a brain of sorts. Feeling is seeing is moving.
There is beauty in unfinished things. Bonbon beauty. Unfinished things can hold the original impulse of the artist. As a longtime listener of Song Exploder, I’ve learned that so often, the first sketches of a song—a drum loop or offhand noodling is the nugget, the essential element. It’s the thing itself with a life of its own. And so much of the rest of the process is trying to honor that original sketch, the first noodling that was totally on to something.
It’s weird to share unfinished noodling sketches. But sketching is how things are made. Everything starts unfinished. And maybe some things are meant to be that way. An unfinished thing in and of itself.
I took a walk today and it was meaningful in the moment. After having not moved all summer, moving feels amazing. I can feel air in my lungs. I’m sweating on purpose. I’m loosening a literal tightness in my chest. “I like to go walking. Is it the moving that stirs my brain?”
That’s a bonbon.