“I’m still doing that?” I whined to Julz exasperated. It’s a bad habit I thought I had left behind. When dancing I have a tendency to hold my arms out straight during certain moves instead holding them in the “hug a tree” curve.
“Like this,” Julz said, demonstrating her arms up over her head just shy of making a circle with them. “Like you’re holding up the world, like you have the whole world in your hands.”
Julz has lots of ways to help us remember how to hold our bodies or do a dance step right. And she’s always coming up with more. She’s very patient about repeating them again and again. I can be years, but it’s just a matter of time before one sticks.
Today is Bellydancing day. That’s how I think of Wednesdays. And my whole day is focused around getting my work done early so I can leave for class at 5pm.
As I bundled up to go outside this morning to shovel the walks and feed the animals, Julz’s words from last week came back to me.
By the time I was mucking out the barn, with no one but the animals to hear me, I was belting out…”She’s got the whole world in her hands, she’s got you and me sister in her hands, she’s got the whole world in her hands. She’s got me and Fate in her hands she’s got me and Lulu in her hands….. And on and on naming every animal and person on the farm.
I sang while I cleaned out the chicken coop and filled up the water buckets. And when Jon came out to take his morning photos, I sang to him.
The truth is every time I watch the women in my Bellydancing Class dance they look they look like goddesses to me. I can see in their posture, and feel in their energy what I saw and felt when I was looking at all those early images of goddess’ from Mariana Gimbutas’ book The Language Of The Goddess.
It’s all strangely familiar.
But when I look for the one picture I have in my head that I’m sure is there, I can’t find it. It’s not just one image I see, but many of the them combined, as if the images from the book are moving though my head.
In 2015, long before I even thought of Bellydancing, I made some Dancing Goddess Potholders based on the images from Gimbutas’ book.
My art has always taught me about myself, and these dancing goddess potholders that I made almost 10 years ago seem to have been foreshadowing my love of Bellydancing.
It does make me wonder, even more, about the power of art.
That pot holder is very cool! By the way, I love the Zip cards.
I don’t think I really got the impact of it when I made it Carolyn, It’s taken a while for me to really understand it. I’m so glad you like the Zip cards!