counting down . . .
I am a Capricorn with a Virgo rising.
I've overplanned and overthought, but the follow through is lagging.
But back to the belly dancing . . . . . . .
In April of 1993 I was hanging out in a little guest house perched on a hill over the bay in the town of Kompong Som in Cambodia. For a few days it was just me and a couple from Berlin, my not so nice Jewish girl counterpart Sarai and her boyfriend. We'd linger for hours on the porch in sarongs or our bathing suits, sending the boy to the market to get our food and eventually making our way down to the beach by mid afternoon. One day Sarai turned to me and said that with my body I should be a belly dancer.
Fast forward to October 1993. I'd been back on US soil for 48 hours and the reverse culture shock was beginning to take over for the jet lag. One of Edwina's (my Irish friend with whom I was staying. Hi Edwina!) friends worked at Kanzaman's Restaurant on Haight Street, which featured Fat Chance Belly Dance on Sunday nights. I was a goner.
I had already decided during my travels to not pursue my original career plan as an art therapist in favor of studying Chinese Medicine (thanks to practicing Qi Gong in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, Kopan, in the Kathmandu Valley overlooking Bodhinath Stuppa). Now I knew that American Tribal style belly dance was necessary for my mental and emotional health while in grad school. Next Monday it will be 11 years to the day that I began studying at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and in January I will mark 11 years since that first class taught by Jane Archer (when she was still with Gypsy Caravan).
I can't picture what my life would have been like had I not found these 2 passions of mine. Would I be happy if I decided to not leave the music business as I finished college? What if I took my travel money and spent it on an art therapy masters like originally planned? Would I have ever left New York?
Do those questions matter? I have more pressing things to tend to, like my laundry and more reading on Catal Huyuk and the Goddesses Cybele, Artemis and Aphrodite in advance of seeing their temples. That's something that matters, temples dedicated to Goddesses.
I've overplanned and overthought, but the follow through is lagging.
But back to the belly dancing . . . . . . .
In April of 1993 I was hanging out in a little guest house perched on a hill over the bay in the town of Kompong Som in Cambodia. For a few days it was just me and a couple from Berlin, my not so nice Jewish girl counterpart Sarai and her boyfriend. We'd linger for hours on the porch in sarongs or our bathing suits, sending the boy to the market to get our food and eventually making our way down to the beach by mid afternoon. One day Sarai turned to me and said that with my body I should be a belly dancer.
Fast forward to October 1993. I'd been back on US soil for 48 hours and the reverse culture shock was beginning to take over for the jet lag. One of Edwina's (my Irish friend with whom I was staying. Hi Edwina!) friends worked at Kanzaman's Restaurant on Haight Street, which featured Fat Chance Belly Dance on Sunday nights. I was a goner.
I had already decided during my travels to not pursue my original career plan as an art therapist in favor of studying Chinese Medicine (thanks to practicing Qi Gong in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, Kopan, in the Kathmandu Valley overlooking Bodhinath Stuppa). Now I knew that American Tribal style belly dance was necessary for my mental and emotional health while in grad school. Next Monday it will be 11 years to the day that I began studying at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and in January I will mark 11 years since that first class taught by Jane Archer (when she was still with Gypsy Caravan).
I can't picture what my life would have been like had I not found these 2 passions of mine. Would I be happy if I decided to not leave the music business as I finished college? What if I took my travel money and spent it on an art therapy masters like originally planned? Would I have ever left New York?
Do those questions matter? I have more pressing things to tend to, like my laundry and more reading on Catal Huyuk and the Goddesses Cybele, Artemis and Aphrodite in advance of seeing their temples. That's something that matters, temples dedicated to Goddesses.
posted by tovah @ 9:35 PM
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