This solitary splash of color reminds me of a forum posting I read yesterday. It was comments from a male dancer. It seems that he found an ad for a dance class. As he reads, the teacher being interviewed bubbles over about how the dance was taught by women for women and her class focuses on that feminine energy. The male dancer is saddened by this and wishes that he could find a class where he could fit in. I am paraphrasing here.

This really disturbed me on so many levels. First of all, I think it would be awful to not have a way to express that creative dance energy, to dance through the mysteries of life, my spirit would literally die.

And yet, I have always thought of "belly dancing" as being a way to express my female energy. My day job is in construction, so I put my female self away as much as possible. When I leave that job I want to just explode with the need to express that other side of myself. I have always felt that the dance gave me the perfect way to do that.

I taught belly dancing to middle and high school students. One year, I had 2 boys who joined in the class. I taught them as best I could, but, I was always afraid to teach them the wrong way to do things. What is appropriate on a female body may not translate so well on the male body. I think this issue would be easier if the student were older. They would feel more comfortable within their own skin and could tell you if it felt wrong.

Rather than being a question of male or female and who has the right to experience this, maybe it is a question of the predominantly women teachers not knowing how to teach this dance correctly to a man.

When I ponder this situation, I also am only looking at it from a "belly dancing" perspective and not from a Middle Eastern dance point of view. Perhaps if Mustapha sees this, he will comment. At any rate dancers, what say you?

Wednesday:
Hi, Mercedes here. I went for the walk this morning. As you walk onto the trail there is a holding pond on your left. There is a clearing on one side, a dirt road on the other and in front and it is backed by a cliff. This cliff is obscured from view because of a solid wall of big old cottonwood trees.

The pond is perfectly still, like a mirror, the mysteries of life gaze back at me. The full moon shines through the leafy lace of the trees, casting a perfect reflection onto the still surface of the water. In the pre-dawn there is a hush on the world, a breathless expectation of the coming day.

I put aside my own plans for this day and revel in this moment. My heart beat slows, my breath quiets, my conscious body and mind relax. I open my heart to the mysteries. As I do I can feel the energies of all the living things around me. It is a humming, vibrating, tumultuous symphony of activity. If I chose to I could close my eyes and separate each individual instrument of my magnificent morning orchestra. I choose not to because this would then rob me of the visual ballet being played out in front of me.

My conscious mind grabs at this stray thought as it floats by, that the song being played in front of me is the same song that plays in my heart when I dance. My blood warms at the blatant reference as I begin this dance through the mysteries of life.

When I hear that familiar drumbeat, my heart can join in, my blood can then flow into the rhythmn. The violin will pull my undulating body into the melody. For the duration of that song, I can rejoin and dance through the mysteries of life, my body one instrument in the total orchestra.

My energy is neither male or female, old nor young and it knows no earthly boundaries at all. It is an absolutely vital part of the total orchestration.

A breeze stirs the surface of the pond, a cloud skids across the face of the moon. The silence is disturbed by the footsteps of another jogger. And I am back to the day. Perfect, whole and complete.

Tuesday:
I go for an early morning walk every day along the Clear Creek bike path. I get a chuckle out of that alone, Clear Creek. Does this mean that everything will become clear to me if I hang out by this stream every day?

At any rate, I start the walk in the dark. We have had rains for the last couple days and so everything was pretty drippy and wet. Branches to trees stand out in dark relief against the skyline. It is a full moon, so my path is lit up as if there were a giant street lamp hanging from the sky. The air is chilly because the seasons are changing. A frosty,silvery and mystical painting - the mysteries of life wear a different scene.

I walk out of the forested area into the meadow, the sky is turning from inky black to dark blue, the moon still hangs in solemn splendor. I round the corner, shivering slightly and prepare to take the bridge over the creek. As I do, I look over my shoulder to the east and stop suddenly.

The sun is just beginning to rise over the horizon. Low lying clouds diffuse the rays and turn them into a solid wall of hot pulsating orange. The promise of heat, the brilliance of color takes my breath away.

I stand between night and day, between frost and heat and just marvel in silence. And then I think, wow, this is what they mean by paradigm shift. Sometimes all you have to do to see your world in a different way is...just turn around.