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| Still from Wuthering Heights (2011) |
Garbed in blue, I was anointed in blue. For the
fertility of spring, the Easter of the southern clime, the spring equinox. It
is possible that then I entered into a dream-state—but I might just be making
that bit up.
Last weekend I participated in a dance performance
with the Hands, Heart and Feet tribe at the end of a day celebrating the
elements at the Leela Centre in Darlinghurst. While I did not participate in
the day, which was a Women’s Weekender organised by Genevieve Rogan of Dancing
Change, the sense of community, bonding and opening up of those who did came
through in the relaxed evening.
Bree Rain—let me take some degree of license here
to call her a spiritual celebrant—was present to close the day before the
performance began. Oddly, she offered pomegranate juice to symbolise the close
of winter. She reminded us of the story of Persephone whose consumption of
seven pomegranate seeds resulted in her exile in the Underworld. This
is the bit that struck me as odd, and merged with my later thoughts about a
dream-state in blue—drinking the pomegranate juice only works if we associate
the freshness of fruit with the newness of spring, not with Persephone’s
mistake.
I don’t criticise, it was merely a moment of
dissonance, something that did not sit well when I considered it. But as with
anything a bit of explanation tends to elucidate the intended meaning, which
could be anything if you are suitably convincing.
If the pomegranate represented the (spring-reborn)
element of Earth, the sheer blueness of the blue lotus tinged oil aligned it
with Water, raising another dissonance if oil and water do not mix.
Blue lotus, from some swift internet-based
research, is an oneirogen, a substance
that is said to induce a dream-like state of mind, sometimes called ‘lucid
dreaming’.
Again, I felt a
dissonance with the spring equinox. Although lucid dreaming is not deep
dreaming, is not sleep, spring is yet the wakening from sleep, so the idea of
inducing a lucid dreaming state to awake from our winter hibernation and
embrace the fertility of spring still seemed a slightly conflicting notion.
One experience of this
with no mind to the origin, medium or expectation of achieving any unusual
state of consciousness cannot offer much.
Bree anointed our foreheads with a spiral of oil,
her finger coming to a stop in the centre of the circle. Someone remarked that
it would be a wonderful perfume—a very expensive one, Bree rejoined. I closed
my eyes and breathed in the scent. I couldn’t describe it for you, but it was
floral, sweet, delightful—certainly, it was a natural scent. (My make-up pad
came away a little blue, later.)
As usual when I perform these days there were no
real nerves. I did not even feel stiff or clumsy from sitting for a time before
we danced. I don’t think I thought much, I felt the movements keenly. It was a
smooth, relaxed-pace dance (you can watch a video of the dance here), so perhaps I just fell into the
rhythm and calmness of it. Once we had unwrapped our blue fabric for the second
half of the dance—the chiffonography, if you will—I even recovered well from M
and I becoming entangled!
Now, I am in a meditation of the colour blue and
how this can link to the spring equinox, I am reminded of some
musings on blue shared on Brainpickings. Blue merges into or is conjured by
a distance, the darkness and the light, and as the light returns in spring
perhaps blue becomes clearer. Now I am of the mind to leave you with Persephone—‘Our lady of the underground’—from
Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown: ‘But look a little closer, everything will be
revealed / Look a little closer, there’s a crack in the wall’. Let the light
in.
