What I Learned from Gabrielle Roth

Her music was the background of my life for many years. Her rhythms affected how I moved through the world. Eternal Dance was the rhythm of my days. Refuge was the music I used to clean my home. Yet, when Gabrielle Roth passed away on October 22, 2012 I didn’t know about it. Her passing was not noted in anything I read or saw, I only learned that she was gone when Eve Ensler, speaking at TEDxWomen in December 2012, said that she was no longer with us.

I was saddened to know that I had lost touch with Gabrielle, with her teachings, with my own sense of self. Her work has been called meditative dance, sacred dance, trance dance. I called it ecstatic dance, a call to leave my own limitations and connect with the natural rhythms of my body. When I ceased listening to her rhythms, I ceased listening to the rhythms of my own body, my own soul.

Then Eve called on us to dance on V-Day, February 14, 2013, and I knew that I would have to join, not only to stand with all the women who had been harmed by violence, but also to honor Gabrielle, the teacher of my way of being in the world.

What Owns Me?

I moved again last month—the fifth time in two years—and it got me thinking about ownership and what it means to own things and the way ownership confers both status and responsibility.

With all that moving around, I don’t own very much right now. About a year ago, as I planned for this most recent relocation, I sold off all the furniture I had taken years to accumulate and packed the rest of my belongings into storage. I felt as if I’d been cut loose from something that anchored me in place. Since then I’ve lived in furnished accommodations—hotels, sublets, shares. The few personal items I wanted to use—toiletries, clothing, utensils—moved with me in several medium-sized plastic containers that I could manage myself.

The fact that I have a storage unit baffles me. What, I frequently ask myself, is in there? And why do I need to hang on to it? I know a part of the answer: a lot of papers—I’m a writer and I like to keep what I’ve written. It’s not replaceable. And books and records and souvenirs—even a box of rocks and shells and geodes—that I’ve accumulated. The reality is that I could probably leave it all behind and my life would not be significantly different.

So then, why do I own these things—the ones I keep and the ones I store—and what does it mean to own them?

The Most Dangerous Thing

Thoughts
Can start wars
Can turn friends to foes
Can make difference dangerous
Silos are made to shelter missiles
Thoughts are the true
WMDs