Open Heart Sky

You Are a Person of Consequence is an original spoken word poem by Olenka Toroshenko from the upcoming album Portals (2022).

The sun in shining, the smell is rich with the creamy and alluring aroma of wattle blooms, signalling spring. The sounds of the morning chorus penetrate my bedroom wall.

I feel a jolt of electricity, excitement in my belly, thinking of my morning walk and “getting out and into it”. And then I moved my leg. Lightning bolts shoot up my leg and into my sacrum and lower back, causing this unwieldy, repulsive groan that begins somewhere in the depths of my being

Just another day.

It’s cane-o-clock. I’ve been on and off the cane for 3 months, as I unwind the symptoms and setbacks of my reproductive operation in May. They tell you it takes time. What they don’t tell you is how you’ll be fine, biking and walking kilometres at a time like it “aint not thang” one minute and back on the cane and incapable of putting on my own socks and shoes the next.

I feel stuck. Stuck in my body. Like a raging storm is brewing in my chest, ready to unleash its gale-force winds upon the eroded hills that surround me.

I’ve been cane-less for a week and loving it. Walking around, bending over, doing laundry, going for my morning walk. Beginning to feel like my old self again.

If the times (we’re in the middle of a world pandemic, right?) have taught me anything …there is no way to go back.

What would I be going back to?

And does choosing the blissful ignorance of the past resemble biting off one’s nose to spite its own face?

For a while there, I thought if I bought a nice wooden cane, something respectable looking, that I might lean into the style of the thing and embrace it. Turns out, I overestimated my capacity for cool. Turns out using a cane when you don’t need a cane is cool. Not being able to stand up without out one…less so. It offered me a shroud of guilt that feels new, lined with embarrassment and embossed with humiliation, I’m now, for the 8th month in a row, eating one fat and juicy

humble sandwich

In early December of 2020, I was a 31 year old yoga teacher, dancer/dance teacher and movement human who found solace in expressing my experience of the world using my body as the vehicle, all the while unaware of how tenuous my health was, is and has always been. Oh Joni, you said it best: “…you don’t know what you‘ve got ‘till it’s gone”.

In late December I was bitten by a mosquito, which by December 23rd had fully formed into the mighty and all powerful Ross River Virus (Ross River Fever/epidemic poly arthritis). Look out folks, this one’s a ripper. Forget opening your own tube of toothpaste, life’s about to take a turn. I hadn’t planned to contract the virus (who does!?) and it put a wrench in the timeline I had coordinated with my surgeon for an operative laparoscopy for endometriosis set for March.

Did I mention the last 8 months have been a doozy?

Fast forward the tape, past the Ross River Fever and past the laparoscopic surgery to now. I’ve not worked for more than 3 hours a week since December. I’ve got a cane, I’m not allowed to practice yoga or stretch with any significance and I’m still prescribed “down-grading all physical activity for the next 8 weeks”.

And you know what? On this day I can honestly say, I’m blessed.

All in all my cup is full and I’m grateful to be alive. I’ve never appreciated the little things more. Being able to put your own socks on = WIN. Days where I can walk unassisted (by cane or human) = WIN. I’ve got a roof over my head, food on my table, a blood family and chosen one who love me every day. I have my sight, I can breathe clean air, I live out in the country. Money’s tight, but all good things come to those who wait.

space.

peace.

stillness.

simplicity

These were the things I wrote on my “manifestation list” in 2017 as far off ideas in a one-day-I-hope-to-know-what-these-feel-like kind of way. I’m learning. The kind of learning that costs something. The kind of learning you’re least likely to do or choose for yourself. The kind that life throws you into, feet first, clothes on when you least expect it. The kind that doesn’t look graceful and you’re ill-equipped to hold on to with your competence-driven grasp.

I white-knuckled a lot of things. Not wanting to let go of who I was, or what I had planned to achieve in this time.  All of the lost dreams, a tour and gigs that got flushed down to the toilet during this world pandemic.

It’s been a 180 degree turn.

And I’m seeing my life and the world I live in from a completely different vantage point, through a different lens.

Is this what it feels like to be 80? I’ve asked myself time and time again.

With no answers and a ton of questions, I’m still taking a bite outta that scrumptious humble sandwich.

Being invited to go surfing by friends who don’t realize I still can’t walk (I don’t blame them, how could they know?), seeing people go out to ecstatic dance, craving that pigeon pose to stretch the tight hips that ache or wanting to go for a run. A run! Can you imagine?! Oh the things we’ve taken for granted. The sheer miracle that is walking. I don’t take that fore granted. I’m learning these lessons through discomfort.

Not everything is for us to control. Not everything is meant to go the way we had planned. Not everything is here for our use, at our disposal and for our disposal, we don’t deserve this much. Certainly less than we have.

We could all use a little humility check. A little wake-up call. You know, in case we didn’t hear the earth’s alarm bells via a climate crisis or world pandemic ringing in our ears.

Remember those old projects from “that time in your life”? Rekindling my relationship to this long lost tumblr account feels the very same way. Ultimately, I have no idea if any humans even see this. I’ve long ago walked away from my blog as if it “had to be something” or “belonged somewhere else”....oh the elaborate funerals we plan long in advance for our most simple and nourishing creative outlets. I love writing. I always have. I was the kid with the shiny sling purse with paper and a pen. Taking notes. Observing the world.

I suppose what I’m trying to do is conquering any expectation or barrier between me and the proverbial “white blank page”. It doesn’t have to look pretty, but you do have to start. Once you’ve done that, the rest is a piece of cake. 

Right, so I’m not going to make some sweeping New Year’s Resolution-style proclamation: “I will commit to post on my blog 3 times per week”. I’m simply saying, if I wrote more and cared less about how it was received, then perhaps this world might be a little less

or a little more mad than it already is. We ought to be taking note of this time, no? Masks. Hysteria. Lockdowns. Isolation. Massive moral questions and no sooner (too soon?) making moral decisions about how our culture is to look.

Look.

Look Up.

Wake Up.

Goopsteppa is returning to his old stomping grounds in Calgary this weekend for a show that will fill your cup with his wet and drippy sound, making you forget it’s winter altogether. Playing alongside Calgary-based producers Half Normal, Goopsteppa is returning to Alberta after a busy run playing throughout the United States.

Let the snow stay where it is and step inside the alternate universe he orchestrates and paints around you. This artist has set himself apart from the pack by developing a uniquely-Goopsteppa sound that relentlessly draws crowds and manipulates your body on command. Calgary is in for a journey through the darker and deeper depths of bass music this Friday night. Goopsteppa has been exceptionally busy in 2017 producing and releasing 2 new albums, most notably his newest, Through the Dark, a path that leads his unique sound from the edge of a lush and green, drippy forest into the deeper depths amongst the unknown powers that be.

It’s difficult to imagine this wintery show without traveling back to his iconic 5:00 AM set at Bass Coast Festival in 2016.  In this particular Goopsteppa encounter, hundreds of festival goers navigated sheets of sideways rain and muddy bodies to “The Brain” where a jam-packed dance floor got down low and slow in the mythical alternate realm.  Outside, rain was relentlessly pouring down upon those destined to dance, but inside you wouldn’t have known by the steamy and humid ebb and flow of the dance floor.  An insular bubble in time, Goopsteppa took people on a journey far from the cold and rainy BC morning into a most sultry, intimate and engaging space. Crowd tightly packed, the dance floor moved in one endless wave that was enough to make any person sweat.

Goopsteppa’s music has the power to transport me to another time and another place. Similar to well-crafted fantasy novel, his innate ability to manipulate the dance floor leaves me lost in experience, navigating each bass drop and beat as if I am wandering the lands of my own story, often forgetting that he is masterfully playing with the strings of my marionette.

Alas, the Master of Goop returns. Leave the snow behind, just as we did that drippy morning in 2016, and step Through the Dark.