It’s like I’ve walked into a whole new life in the last two months.

Yet–

It feels easily in relationship with the whole of what came before and what remains of that — less “whole new” than more coherent and connected, and it’s happened more fluidly than I ever imagined it might. It’s like the same plot of land, but all the soil’s been loosed, turned over, to make way for new growth.

Which is always an experiment, involving moments of outrageous beauty and moments of confusion and moments of failure and moments of remembering how “whole,” of course, means all of those things.

How different elements coexisting, how shifts, how movement, how it feels like everything is a dance –

with solo sections and ensemble pieces alternating, linked; with a mix of tight choreography and improvisation.

On a walk in a city I was visiting three weeks ago I was trying to understand the relationships between emotion, desire, responsibility, agency, timing, care, connection.

On a walk in my neighborhood more than a month ago I was talking through a slew of possible narratives and futures — explanations, potential choices and the implications of those — thinking and talking and thinking and talking while walking, my mind jumbled and confused, and yet my body was sending very clear messages and I had to ask, Do I believe these things I’m always writing (to myself, to you) about movement? Do I trust my body at all?

On a walk near a community garden and park this morning I found a spot where I could be alone and jump over rocks and run between trees, and I took this picture of pink flowers on the other side of a fence and I shared it.

On a walk in my mind on a night I couldn’t sleep I realized how much I’d been hit by those hitting scenes in a movie I’d thought I was unaffected by a few hours before, and I breathed in the dark through old flinches and fears.

On a few walks lately, I’ve misstepped.

On this collaborative walk with BFP (et, increasingly, al.), we’re thinking through what commitment to walking together means when there are missteps — or divergent ones.

On too many conversational walks lately in supposedly queer or queer-friendly spaces, I’ve been feeling like other people’s reductive, binary understandings of gender are being mapped onto me, and it’s frustrating to have to muster the energy to respond to that, and keep responding, and keep.

On a walk with an economic system that’s dehumanizing and isolating, it’s hard to figure out anything close to balance or sense — but collaborative conversations help connect, inspire, sustain.

On walks in different places lately people close to me have faced violence that is not only personal but communal.

On a walk on a Griffith Park trail two weeks ago I was loving Los Angeles and life and love and everything so much I was overflowing with it (and even the bad air looked beautiful).

On a walk on a different mountain trail a few weeks ago, I arrived alone but crossed paths with so many neighbors wearing so much bright color.

On all these walks, and more, a wish: That we all trust both movement and bodies, our own and each other’s, in all their difference and, especially, in all the complicated yet simple, multiple, inevitable, marvelous ways they connect.

A wish for embodiment, for dance, for interdependence, for a wholeness whose aspects are many, many, many. And shifting.