Kirstyn Lazur | Fairy Dustballs

Quarantine Dream

3/25/2020

A space.
Between eyes open and eyes shut.

A space.
Between the dream and the reality.

Shall I speak of the dream or the reality or the space between?

You can scroll to the one you like. It will be like one of those choose-your-own story books. We choose our own story anyway.

The Reality.
Eyes open. Sunlight penetrates through the curtains to create its daily art: a rectangle on my floor.
Then, different pieces clank into place like heavy bricks.

Coronavirus.
Empty shelves. Empty lots. Empty workplaces.
No toilet paper. No job. No money.

Trains carrying military vehicles roll along railroad tracks.
Schools with no students are full of sanitization workers.
Clean desks. Clean walls. Clean 5G installation.

At home, people stare at computer screens.
Drones fly over cities warning citizens to stay inside.
Hug your technology, but do not hug anyone else.
Keep six feet between or is it six feet under?

Talk of lockdown. Talk of vaccines.
Talk of saviors and of devils.

Shhh… listen close. Hear the footsteps of the National Guard marching in.

This morning, I cried upon my waking.

The Dream.
Eyes open. Sunlight penetrates through the curtains to create its daily art: a rectangle on my floor.

Then different pieces assemble like birds entraining to the rhythm of each other’s wings.

Vibrancy.
An ocean. A mountain. A river.
Green trees and feet in fertile mud.
The heartbeat of life.

I know your heart and you know mine.

As the sun sets, her beams kiss the horizon. We kiss each other.

We dance. We sing. We touch. We heal.

We could float, but we choose to stay in our bodies because we love our bodies.

This morning, I cried upon my waking.

The Space Between.
Darkness.
Sound of creation.
Rock side to side
to a mother’s lullaby.
You are created with purpose.
The purpose is love.
You are love and love is you and the space between is also love.

The space between is yours to

fill or empty
shout or whisper
be seen or go unseen.

The space is yours.

Dreams and realities share a strange tango.
Dream legs wrap around reality hips and reality arms slither up dream backs.
Wrapped in each other’s passions, they become as indistinguishable as sugar and salt.

Still...
there is the space between and the space is yours.

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A Fairy Dustball Friend

3/12/2020

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When I called her, "Fairy Dustball" popped up on her screen. Not my name. "Fairy Dustball." The name of this blog. She wrote it in her phone that way because she got me.

She was here. Now she is gone.

She has become her own fairy dustball: ethereal and magical and beautiful and true, emerging from the river of tears we leave behind in her absence. That's a fairy dustball situation - something of grace and something of sorrow.

My beloved soul sister is dead.

We met sometime around 2006. I had just moved to Los Angeles and was desperately looking for WHY I was even there. My mother had just died the previous year and I was still searching for my lost joy. One day while mindlessly scrolling, looking up who-knows-what online, I “happened" to come across the name of a class called core fusion. The name intrigued me. I went to take the class at exhale in Santa Monica. The class kicked my butt. I thought I’d never return. But I did.

I was intoxicated by the euphoric feeling and strength the classes gave me. I found solace in the spa and comfort in the familiar faces that attended the same classes day after day. Then came Jenifer. I marveled at her stretch. She had been a former ballerina with the New York City ballet and she still looked like she was dancing with the company — legs for miles, extension galore, an arch to die for, arms that at any moment were about to do port-de-bras.

Then after one class Jenifer asked, “Have you thought about teaching?”

“Teach?!? I can’t even TAKE the class!” I said.

She smiled. In that instant she knew I eventually would. That’s what soulmates do when you meet them. They can see all your talents, what you can do with them, your limitless potential, even when you have no clue. That was a fairy dustball moment - something of no faith and something of faith.

Within a year I was training under Jenifer to become a barre teacher.

Any teacher who has had Jenifer train them will tell you the same; she loved teaching. She loved knowing your unique essence and showing you how to use that in the classroom in order to bust through everyone's perception of what they thought they could do with their bodies.

She was meticulous. She gave notes on your class: the good and the not-so-good all carefully recorded with feedback on how to be better. So you could be inspired. So you could give more. In return, your commitment to embody the art of teaching — that’s what inspired HER. She mentored many teachers over the years — teachers that would become some of the best I have ever known.

Jenifer and I taught classes. Then, we'd take each other’s classes. She loved learning from me, and I from her. She loved learning period. Great teachers always do.

Whenever she felt anxious, Jenifer would call me. I’d call her when I felt no one else could understand. We cried together, but we mostly laughed. After class, she’d sip her champagne at the Shangri-La hotel and look out to the Pacific Ocean. I’d sip my tea. Then we’d smile in gratitude for each other.

We’d dance up a storm in the studio after her Saturday morning class. We’d play classical and jazz and pop and improv our hearts out. People would pause at the door and stare. Our dance was sweaty and fierce and full of love. Dance was our healer and the studio our sanctuary. We called the dance in. We also freely gave it out.

Jenifer felt into the deepest of crevices; she felt into the highest of gentle breezes. She could feel the sadness of a student, or the joy, or the pain, or the bliss. She'd put her hands on a rib cage to extend the side stretch. She'd pull the bottom of a foot to lengthen the hip flexor. She'd square off the hip bones to accentuate the stretch in the hamstring. Then you'd feel your body. Then you'd be in your body. That's what healers do: re-introduce you to you.

She’d stay with a student for 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes after class to discuss the student's previous injuries and how to modify, their sore necks and how to release tension, their dogs and their cats, their tribulations and their victories.

Then she'd return home to her trees, where the ashes of loved ones resided. Their spirits arranged leafs in circular patterns at her doorstep to let her know she was loved. She wrote poetry to the universe. She had pages upon pages of poetry she shared only with God.

Jenifer.stood.her.ground.

She fought for herself and she fought for those she loved. When she fought for you, it was because she knew the beauty and power of your soul. She wouldn’t let anyone touch that. Not ever.

Jenifer would remind you how special you were. “I KNOW what I KNOW," she'd say.

She held equal amounts of wisdom and innocence in her body. She moved with grace and authority. Sensuality and sass. She could get down in the soul as much as she could fly in spirit — on the dance floor and off. That's a fairy dustball quality, something of dirt and something of air.

My body is embedded with the wisdom she passed down to me. When I teach a class she is in me; she comes through me.

“I’ll be with you when I get to the other side,” Jenifer told me in our last phone conversation. “You know that, right?”

“Yes,” I said. That's a fairy dustball conversation, something of beauty and something of muck.

Tumors. Brain cancer. Surgeries. Death.

I got on my yoga mat today for the first time since her earthly farewell. I planked and down dogged and vinyasa-ed. Then I felt Jenifer near. Her voice rose above the music coming through the speakers, singing her words of encouragement as she had always done. "I KNOW what I KNOW."

And I moved on my mat with her. That's a fairy dustball dance, something of missing and something of coming home.

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On the Anniversary of My Mother's Death (Part 15)

1/6/2020

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The day he got sick I started chopping vegetables in the kitchen. I didn’t know what I was going to make. But, I knew I had to chop. My knife hit the plastic cutting board with a whack. Maybe the vegetables would go in a soup. Maybe they’d be steamed, sautéed, or baked. Whatever it would be it would have to be grand because he had the kind of flu you had to feed. I knew because I had recently recovered from the very same lung-hacking dry cough delirium.

We had just moved in together. Only two weeks before he had given me an engagement ring. My first committed relationship. On the one hand, I was in heaven. On the other, he was guzzling garlic shots. I couldn’t let him down.

The stovetop hissed. A pot of water that I’d forgotten boiled over. Water sizzled over the surface. I had no idea how to control the temperature on these electric things. One minute, the stovetop was black and dark. The next, hot, orange circles detonated rotini, blackened omelets, turned rice to cement. I yearned for a gas stove where flames could be properly managed. As I mopped up the excess water with a towel, my muscles tightened. I’d never cooked for anyone before. Sure, there were a few dishes I could throw together here and there. But I never made a fuss for myself. Why bother baking a whole chicken just for me? What would be the point?

I thought of all the food my mother had cooked for me and her mother and her mother’s mother. They were excellent cooks. They made meatloaf with bacon. Ham and scalloped potatoes. Shepherd’s Pie. And they made it look easy. I never really cooked with my mom much. I’m not sure why. I was always too busy and I thought I had plenty of time to learn. I never examined her techniques: the way she mashed potatoes or what she used in the marinade or how she was able to keep all the dishes warm and serve them simultaneously. I wanted to pick up the phone to call her. I needed to ask how she knew when a greasy burger was medium well, how she got just enough black on the edges of the apple crisp, and, my immediate dilemma, how a pile of chopped vegetables be served to a sick man. But, I couldn’t call her. She was dead. There was no way to ever ask her.

On top of the refrigerator was her small brown recipe box. I climbed the step stool and with a few swipes of my flailing arm, I grabbed it. I rolled back its top. Magazine clippings and newspaper clippings and yellowed indexed cards with her very distinct handwriting popped out with such force that a few fell to the floor. I knelt to pick up a fallen card and rubbed my finger over her perfectly straight letter “l” and the swirl atop her letter “a.” I wished she’d appear in the kitchen. I wished I could have a smidgen of her cooking ability. I so much wanted to comfort the coughing man sprawled on the couch. I came up with concoctions for him over his sick days. Some steamed broccoli. A sushi roll. Hot cider.

My food wasn’t good enough, even though he insisted it was. But I knew it wasn’t because it wasn't as good as hers.

So, I grieved her and tears flowed again. I thought I had cried all the tears that a human could cry, but rivers are a breath away and overflow at unexpected times. It’s like that onion I chopped without one tear until the very end when my blade sliced through the last inner layer.

But this time the tears felt different. The tears were not sad or lonely. They were tears of longing held in love. The greater my desperation to nurture the man I loved, the more I felt waves of her essence around me. It hurt, but it was also a miracle. A grand miracle.

It is too grand for me to try cooking anything else in the kitchen, at least for now. But with time and in love, who knows what dishes shall come.

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Quarantine Dream

A Fairy Dustball Friend

On the Anniversary of My Mother's Death (Part 15)

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Quarantine Dream

A Fairy Dustball Friend

On the Anniversary of My Mother's Death (Part 15)

Archives

Subscribe

TWITTER @KIRSTYNLAZUR

Contact KIRSTYN

RECENT FAIRY DUSTBALLS