|
|
|
The Be Fully Alive Podcast On Patreon
|
"We all carry the potential to realize, in real time, that the vibrant energy we experience
when we feel truly loved, seen and met, is who we actually are." Dawn Cartwright
|
|
Episode 369 . The Ecology Of Desire
|
The Be Fully Alive Podcast
I learned to walk in Mamaw's kitchen.
One of those glorious mornings when the sunlight was stretched long across the windowsill and the smell of fried chicken still hung in the air from supper the night before, Uncle Charlie, my mother's youngest brother, offered me a pack of Camels in his outstretched hand. It was then, at the ripe age of seven months, that I let go of being a passive observer and took my first steps as an active participant in the goings on that were going on in that kitchen and the life that ensued beyond it.
Mamaw's kitchen was a study in East Tennessee history, written in the local vernacular of mush melons cut into golden crescent moons. Corn shucked for dinner. Green beans, shellies and salt pork in the pressure cooker. White cornbread in the oven. Sweet tea. I swear legendary Southern cooks are privy to the same kind of collective intelligence as those who built the pyramids. Food offered both nourishment and a deep recognition of who we were and where we came from. I'm convinced the answers to many of life's challenges can be found in a cold glass of buttermilk. (With a wedge of cornbread crumbled up inside it, of course.)
Every now and then, Mamaw would take us into town. Going into town meant many things. It meant going to the bank. It meant visiting Aunt Hazel and Aunt Vasta. It meant putting on lipstick.
Going to town meant getting ready to go to town.
In Mamaw's house, there were two domains.
The family domain, which was where my sister, my brother, our cousins and I lived out our days. It consisted of the living room, the kitchen, the laundry porch and the bathroom.
And then there was Mamaw and Papaw's domain. The two bedrooms in the back of the house.
We never went into those two rooms. Okay, never is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I'm here to tell you that, in those days, children did not have free access to the whole house. The bedrooms of the adults in the house were the sanctum sanctorum.
Getting ready to go to town meant temporary access.
To chenille bedspreads and bureaus with enormous mirrors. Dusting powder in vanity boxes the color of saltwater taffy. Costume jewelry. Eau de cologne. Stillness and sanctity.
We each took our turn, my sister, my brother, my cousins, boys and girls. Strutting across the hardwood floor in high heels with matching pocketbooks. Dusting our bellies with powder puffs. Layering brooches and necklaces on top of our play clothes. Rouging our lips with tiny Avon samples.
Bridging the distance between childhood and the adults we imagined we might become.
I just this minute remembered something Mamaw often said about our forays into her and Papaw’s domain. “They really went to town.” A colloquialism that means, to me, we didn’t hold back.
And the whole reason we didn’t hold back was because we were so beautifully held. And loved.
Part of something that began long before us. Something as close and as all-encompassing as the air we breathe.
This new week of podcast episodes explores desire and the distance between where we are right now and where we are meant to be. The space where we recognize ourselves. And show up ready to go to town.
I hope you'll enjoy listening.
Dawn
This week’s episodes . . . Monday explores the ecology of desire and the bridge between breath and heart. Wednesday is an embodied journey from freeway to forest, exploring the intimate interface within the human lungs and dissolving the distance between where we are now and where we’re meant to be. Friday, we return to Vera and Sören and the ever-changing ecology of desire between two people finding their way toward one another.
Join the Be Fully Alive Podcast Community
|
|
|
 |
|
|
“The atmosphere is a communal space, and lungs are an extension of it.”
— Dr. Michael J. Stephen, pulmonologist and author of Breath Taking
|
|
|
|
Chandra Bindu Tantra Institute
www.chandrabindutantrainstitute.com
310.592.1293
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
